


The Beauty and the Blue Death

by Sforzie



Series: The Beauty [3]
Category: Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ancient Rome, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Rome, Asexual Character, Castrati, Crossover, Gladiators, M/M, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies, Roman Slavery, Star-crossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2019-11-23 01:57:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 51,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18145289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sforzie/pseuds/Sforzie
Summary: Ancient Pompeii is a difficult place to fall in love. Kuja learns this the hard way when his path crosses with that of a handsome blue haired gladiator...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cover art: http://sforzie.tumblr.com/post/183476988180/the-beauty-and-the-blue-death

The Beauty and the Blue Death  
By: Sforzie

Chapter 1

Spring, 78 AD

It was late in the morning when Kuja finally woke from a heavy sleep. The sound of voices out in the peristyle was what did it--far too loud for his aching head this morning. Or, at least, he assumed it was still morning. The foreman knew better than to let him miss the mid-day meal. Kuja groaned inwardly as he inelegantly removed himself from his bed, rubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes and trying to will away the pulsing ache that begun to dwell there.

Too much wine the night before, and not well enough watered down to be safe for such rich consumption. He would have to be more careful.

“Oh, so you aren’t dead.” A gruff voice came from the entryway to his room. “Probably for the best.”

“Shut your mouth.” He splashed his face with water from the basin by his couch and picked up up his hair comb. “How late is it?”

“Fourth hour or so.” The man in the doorway, Cid, muttered half under his breath. “Wish I could sleep in so late.” The foreman grunted. “You lazy thing. You’re lucky the master’s not around to see you like that.”

“I’ll do as I please.” Kuja gritted his teeth against the pull of the comb through the tangle of his hair. “Did I miss any business?”

“Not really. Been a quiet morning. Just one little shit from the magistrate or something with a message for you.”

“Probably another party invitation.” He set the comb down. “Tell the kitchen I’ll take my breakfast out on the porch.”

“Whatever you say, brat.”

 

He had to admit, he was, as the years went by, slowly becoming fond of the Spring months here in Campania. The weather was cool but beginning to warm, the world was beginning to come back to life around him but still not as over the top as the summer would be. It was peaceful. 

The scroll delivered early in the morning rested mostly unread on the tabletop.

“Lucius Caelius Kuja…”

He sighed and brought a piece of cheese to his lips, choosing to look out at the patch of rolling green countryside that was visible from the porch. The handwriting on the scroll alone was enough to tell him where the message had come from. Most of the important men of the city had their favored scribes to which they entrusted all of their message writing. This one was no different.

The contents were another party invitation, this one from one of the city magistrates, Marcus Petronius Mateus. His parties and lavish dinner arrangements were nearly a monthly affair, and Kuja had been expecting an invitation from the man since the first thaw. It was probably only the distraction of the man’s young wife being newly pregnant that had delayed the dispatch. The party was to be in honor of his mother’s fifty-fifth birthday, and would feature a bit of fighting from the gladiatorial school that the magistrate owned as extra entertainment.

“...would be most pleased if you were to grace the festivities and brighten things up with your presence.” He rolled the scroll up and tossed it aside as he flopped back onto the dining couch. “Yes, of course you would, Mateus.”

Kuja knew quite well what the magistrate meant by those words. Being obscenely rich also led men down a path of rather obscene behaviors.

Especially in a city like Pompeii.

 

He awoke at dawn, with the morning bell and the first shouts of the lanista. He muffled a groan in the mattress. His body still ached from the day before, as the previous day’s training had been especially rigorous. The other men had muttered that something was up--they were either being prepped for sale or for an upcoming combat. That morning, he didn’t really care. He just knew he was sore all over.

“Seymour!” A heavy hand clapped him on the back. “Ey, get up!”

He grunted and pushed himself up from the relative comfort of his bed. “Oh, piss off, Seph.”

“Up, up, or I’ll sic Red on you.” The other man loomed over him in the dim lighting of the barracks. “We’re wanted out on the field. Some kind of announcement.”

“Haven’t even eaten yet,” he grumbled as he got to his feet. He opened the old wooden chest at the foot of his small bed and took out a mostly clean tunic. After pulling it on, he followed the other men out into the morning light. The air was cool in the shadows, but warming with those first hints of Spring that he had sorely missed while sleeping in the cold.

A man stood out on the training field, waiting for the men as they assembled in a relatively straight line before him. It was their lanista, Servius Tenebrarum Ravus. He was a tall, modestly built man with silvery blond hair wearing an immaculately white tunic and a pair of military boots. His right hand rested on his hip, his left was completely absent--the man had lost his left arm while fighting in some war in some distant place with a forgotten name.

“Good morning, men,” Ravus’s angular face was, as ever, stoic and unreadable. “I hope all slept well last night; we have a busy day ahead of us.”

“What’s going on, sir? You’ve been whipping us like dogs for days.” A loud-mouthed man with bright red hair spoke up. Ravus fixed an iron look on him. The red haired man flinched, visibly waiting for the reprimand.

“A fair question,” the lanista said after a moment. “Reno, thirty laps when we are done here.”

“Wh-” The red haired man started to splutter his protest, but stopped with a sigh. “Yes, sir.”

“Now then.” Ravus scanned the line of men. “Your master will be holding an important event in a few days, and has requested a selection of his best gladiators to perform as entertainment. It is an honor to be chosen, as you should well be aware of by now.”

Seymour wondered what kind of party would be held in the Spring and feature gladiatorial bouts as entertainment. 

“This will be a prime opportunity for some of you to prove yourselves.” The lanista narrowed his eyes briefly at the red haired man. “Some of you could stand to prove that you are not as expendable as he might think you to be.”

They watched, silent and somewhat apprehensive, as Ravus paced down the length of those assembled. 

“He'll want to see how his new acquisitions perform. So, Blue and the German.”

Blue--that was Seymour. He had been told not to be bothered by the lazy nickname. Ravus didn't bother learning a new fighter’s name until they had successfully proven themselves on the blood sands. This would be his chance to do so.

He watched as Ravus called out another half dozen men. Reno was called, as was Sephiroth. There was the fair haired brute, Seifer, the scar-covered and lazily named Gladiolus, and two other swarthy men that he had not yet had sufficient time to memorize the names of.

Then, aside from Reno and his loud mouth, the gladiators were released to have their morning meal.

“You excited?” Seifer sat next to Seymour on the bench. “Because, I’m fucking excited.”

“I’m not sure excited is the word that comes to mind,” Seymour said. The other man snorted as he stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth.

“You aren’t fooling anyone. We all know you’re no novice. Petronius Mateus bought you just to show off.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time it happened.” Seymour took a gulp of his watered down wine. “Last few years it seems like I’ve changed hands every other bout.”

“That’s because you’re the Blue Death,” Seifer said. “Who wouldn’t want to have a hand in that?”

“The rich make death glamorous.”

Seifer grunted in agreement. “That’s why I signed up.”

Seymour didn’t say anything in response. He didn’t know what to say. It was beyond him why someone would voluntarily give up their freedom just to fight people. He scarcely could remember what freedom had been like. The only time he felt a hint of it was when it was on the blood sands, and even that was a carefully crafted illusion.

The other man continued speaking, as though he had not noticed--or was perhaps ignoring--Seymour’s silence. “It’s just for five years, and I get to reap the rewards. The fame, the money, the eager women.”

“Aren’t you married?”

Seifer grinned. “So? Doesn’t count if it’s with a gladiator.”

“I suppose so.” Seymour decided it was better to steer the conversation away from that subject. “This will be my first bout since I arrived in Pompeii.”

“Pompeii is a great place to be a gladiator,” Seifer said. “Fighter like you will have the ladies falling all over them after your first win.”

“No different than Rome, then.”

The other man laughed. “Less of an awful smelling pisspot than Rome.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

Seifer rubbed his hands together. “Good fight, good food, good time. I can’t wait.”

“Blue!” The lanista’s voice barked from door to the dining hall. “Take breakfast to the Cat. He shouldn’t be left out.”

Seymour knew better than to argue against the task, even though he had been dreading it. He had heard the other gladiators mutter unhappily about being sent to feed the Cat. He didn’t know why they hated it--no one would say.

He collected a plate of food and a mug of wine and headed out of the dining hall. The morning sun was warm on his skin as he crossed the courtyard to the infirmary. It was here that the badly injured were kept, waiting to heal or die. Over the infirmary door a message was painted: ‘I will endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword’. Seymour knew those words well. They were the _sacramentum gladiatorium_ , the gladiators’ sacred oath. He said those words to himself before every time he went out to fight. He liked to think that those words were part of what helped him come back from every fight in one piece.

Seymour pushed the door curtain aside and entered the room.

It was dark, aside from a lone lamp in the far corner of the room. The benches were all vacant, except for one, where a dark figure lounged in the shadows. It was a big fellow with dark skin and a shock of ghostly silver hair. The figure shifted and sat up as Seymour lingered in the doorway.

“Morning, is it?” A deep voice rumbled to his ears. It seemed to come from the shadows themselves, and not the man he was looking at.

“Yeah, the lanista said it was time to feed the Cat.” He gestured with the mug. “So, here I am. You’re the Cat, I take it?”

“That’s what he calls me,” the other man rumbled. His eyes gleamed golden in the lamplight. Seymour set the plate and mug down on the bench nearby, and watched as the muscular body of the other man shifted into view. His dark skin was covered in a patchwork of bandages and fresh scars. Almost the entirety of his left arm was bound in linens.

“My name is Seymour. I’m one of the new fighters. I haven’t had a chance to meet you yet.”

The other man picked up the mug and took a gulp of its contents. “I know. You’re the Blue Death.” He wiped at his mouth. “I remember seeing you fight when I was still in Rome. Was some games set up for a wedding or something. You fought a man and broke his neck with your shield.”

“Ah, yes. That was an accident. Got in trouble with my owner for that one.”

“Was still a brilliant fight,” the man said. He picked up a piece of bread. “My name is Ansem. I’m the school’s bestiarius. Hence Master Ravus’s nickname for me.”

“I see. What are you doing in here?”

“Got mauled by the lions I was fighting in my last bout.” Ansem shrugged. “It happens. Just been taking awhile to heal.”

“You definitely got roughed up.”

Ansem smirked. “You should have seen what was left of the lions.”


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It was raining on the morning of the magistrate’s party. Kuja sat in the triclinium and watched the rain fall through the open doors that led out to the porch. He hoped that the rain would stop by the evening--it was unpleasant to have to do his business when everything was soggy. Well--more unpleasant than it already usually was. Kuja had comes to term with this, with his lot in life, had gotten used to it a long time ago. And even though his dear Senator told him that he did not have to continue doing the unpleasantries, Kuja could not help but feel that they had become an essential part of who he was, and what his station was.

It wasn’t something that the Senator would ever be able to truly understand, either, despite his unending kindness. Kuja did not fault him for it. This was just how the world was. Some men were born into affluence, and some were not. It was just that simple.

And, at the end of the day, his unpleasant duties kept the Senator in good standing, which kept the Senator happy. And that was the best way for things to be, for all parties involved. Kuja had witnessed the cold, slow burn of his Master’s anger in action, and would rightly do anything to keep that force of nature from being directed at himself.

Anything.

And so Kuja called for the two slaves that his Master had bought to attend him not long after he first arrived in Pompeii those years ago. There was his hairdresser, Rosa, and the one in charge of his attire, Ruby. Between the two of them, the pair barely spoke any Latin or Greek, but somehow they were always successful in making Kuja look his best. Perhaps they knew more language than they let on, or perhaps they just really did not want to go back to being kitchen slaves or worse. Kuja knew all about the worse end of the spectrum, and so he did not blame them for their obedience.

“Big party tonight,” he said to the slaves. “Important. I’ve got to look my best.” The women nodded at him.

He considered the weather. Having his hair down was just asking for trouble if it rained again. “Hair up. Maybe a few braids. Bit of sparkle.”

Rosa nodded and opened the wooden case that contained his hair supplies. Kuja sat on a little hardwood stool and looked at the other slave. Ruby was waiting for his word, an expectant look on her face.

Again, Kuja thought. “It isn’t warm enough yet for the silk. So, one of the nicer linen ones. Something with sleeves. Mateus likes the sleeves.”

Ruby nodded and got to work.

 

By mid-afternoon the rain had tapered off to the occasional sprinkle, and so Kuja decided it was safe to venture out into the city. He wrapped a shawl over his head and shoulders, doing his best to hide his face from the crowds as he made his way down the streets. The rain had washed most of the daily filth away, and so walking barefoot along the raised stones of the side streets was not as disagreeable as it might normally be.

The traffic of the streets thinned out as he entered the more affluent part of the city. The big old houses towered overhead, still imposing despite the occasional spiderweb of cracks that remained from the big earthquake more than a decade before. Kuja threaded his way around women being toted on litters by their slaves, and important men trooping along with their bodyguards in tow.

Kuja had no bodyguards to look after him. He wasn’t important enough to need one.

The big burly man guarding the front entryway to the home of Marcus Petronius Mateus barely gave Kuja a complete glance before unbolting the door and pulling it open. Kuja slipped inside, gently lowering the shawl from his carefully styled hair. The entry hall was brightly lit and welcoming. Kuja made his way through, past another guard who paid him no mind, and then into the reception room.

It was a bit darker here, only a few lamps were lit. The couches were occupied by several women, all of them clustered in attention around a pretty young woman with blonde hair. Her stola was just beginning to pull over her belly, and Kuja did not envy her for having to deal with that matter during the upcoming swelter of the summer months. 

He took a deep breath and got to work.

“My lady! You look absolutely radiant!” he exclaimed as he padded over to the women. 

The lady of the house looked up and him and smiled. “Good afternoon, Kuja. You look beautiful today.”

“Thank you, my lady,” he said with a polite bow. “I do my best.”

“I’m sure Mateus will appreciate it,” she said. Quistis winked up at him. “I trust you’ll take good care of him for me?”

Kuja smiled in return. “I always do, my lady.”

“Good. I do like to see him kept in good spirits.”

“Is someone speaking of me?” An airy voice came from the atrium. The owner of the voice, and of the home itself, made his way into the reception room with his usual lazy grace. Marcus Petronius Mateus was a tall, slender man with blond hair and dark violet hued eyes. There was something angular and aristocratic to the man’s face that Kuja couldn’t help but find appealing. Perhaps it was that lazy, almost disdainful way he looked at the world around him. Mateus was one of the city’s magistrates, and the frequent parties were just political tools.

That’s what he was, too, Kuja thought. A political tool.

“Only good things, my lord,” Quistis said. “Only good things.”

He smiled thinly and stooped to kiss her forehead. “I know, my sweet.” Mateus turned his gaze to Kuja. “And you look fit to be made into a sculpture, Kuja.”

“Thank you, my lord,” he said. “I trust your mother is well?”

“Yes, yes, of course. She’s still at the baths.” Mateus waved a dismissive hand. “She’ll be here in time for her own birthday festivities.” He held a hand out to Kuja.

“Were the gladiators your idea?” Kuja took the offered hand.

“Oh, no. My mother insisted on them.”

Kuja was quiet as he followed the older man through the house and to one of the side rooms. Mateus was quiet. He was always quiet about this, as though he were afraid of drawing attention to what he was doing. There was nothing wrong about it, of course, but a man could still have his discretions.

Kuja sat on the usual couch. He could not help but allow a brief, indulgent smirk as the lord of the house knelt next to the couch. Mateus pushed up one of the pale blue sleeves of Kuja’s tunic and pressed a kiss to the bared skin of his slender arm.

“So beautiful,” the older man murmured, his lips trailing against Kuja’s skin as he kissed his way up to Kuja’s shoulder. “Always so beautiful. I am always so pleased to have you gracing my parties with your beauty.”

“And I am always glad to be here, my lord,” Kuja said in soft reply. It was only partially a lie. Mateus was, at least, one of the less repulsive men he had to deal with. “Do you have time to spare, before the festivities begin?”

“I have plenty of time,” the magistrate said. He stood, and reached for his belt.

 

That evening, Kuja did as he always did. As the party began, he sat in the parlor and sang, much to the delight of the wives of the men at the party. When the women’s attention began to wane, he excused himself from the room and went out into the atrium. It was crowded here with men, most of levels of important in Pompeii, as well as a few high political figures that were in town from Rome. Here Kuja danced, as he had been trained to do long ago, twisting gracefully through the crowd and enchanting the men.

But then, after an hour or so, a horn blew from the far side of the grand house, and the men began to make their way towards its source. Kuja followed them. Even if he was not a proper man himself, and certainly not one of such importance and influence, he still had been invited to the party, and so still was permitted to enjoy the entertainment.

And gladiator fights were certainly a form of entertainment that Kuja could enjoy.

He wasn’t sure what it was about the fights, but something about them had drawn Kuja’s attention since the first time he had seen one in Rome. It dwelled in an emotion somewhere between envy and longing. Those muscular bodies, that he could never possess himself, working at peak performance in a beautiful, violent dance. That’s what the fights were, mostly, just staged bouts of fighting for the adoring, blood craving masses. Most fights these days weren’t to the death, but there were still instances of it occurring in non-publicly sanctioned fights.

Kuja knew that Mateus wouldn’t permit such things to occur in his own household. He did have an image to maintain, and that sort of thing just wouldn’t stand. However, a bit of well meaning bloodshed would only do good for his reputation. A man who could put on a good show was certainly one held in high esteem. And Mateus never had any qualms with throwing money around in order to keep his position intact in Pompeii.

Kuja leaned against one of the columns that ringed the house’s central courtyard. He scanned the men who were gathered to watch the fights, noting who was and wasn’t there. Anyone who was trying to enhance or maintain their standing among their peers would have tried to get an invitation to the birthday party for Mateus’s mother. There were, of course, a few important people who were missing from the crowd, but those were people that Mateus disliked enough to leave them out of the festivities.

He could see a few of the gladiators milling about at the northern end of the courtyard. There was also Tenebrarum Ravus, Mateus’s current lanista of choice, standing with his right hand on his hip while speaking with another man that Kuja only distantly recognized as a lanista from one of the other gladiator schools in the city. An older man toting a wooden stick shuffled out into the center of the courtyard and called for the first two fighters. This was the referee--Kuja recognized the man from previous fights that he had seen here in the city. He was usually fair.

The first few fights were standard. Not boring, just nothing that really caught Kuja’s eye. Men that Mateus owned and had trained fought against men that were owned by other men. Some Kuja recognized, others he didn’t. He had heard word that Mateus had acquired a few new gladiators during the winter months, and they had not yet performed at a venue that Kuja had been invited to. Perhaps he would get to see them today.

There was a brief intermission, during which the men got their drinks refreshed and a man that the gladiator known as Seifer had beat senseless was dragged out of the courtyard. Kuja felt a light touch on his right hip and looked to the source. It was a shortish young man with sad eyes and black hair.

“Ah, Caelius Noctis. I’m surprised to see you here.” The young man was a nephew of Kuja’s master, and nearly family now.

Noctis grimaced, briefly looking around at the crowd before looking at the grass between his sandals. “Uncle Somnus made me come. Said it would be good for my character.”

“That does sound like him, yes.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my character,” the young man groused. Kuja smirked at him.

“Are you still pining over that kitchen slave?”

Noctis’s cheeks pinked. “He isn’t a kitchen slave! And, that’s none of your business.”

“It’s my business if your uncle tells me about it.”

The young man scowled briefly, and Kuja couldn’t help but smile at the resemblance to his master.

“If you didn’t want me teasing you, why did you touch me?”

“I just, uh--” Noctis swallowed and glanced around the courtyard. “I don’t really know anyone else here. They’re all just old politicos and perverts.”

“You’ll be an old pervert politico one day, too, if you’re lucky.”

Noctis grimaced again. “I hope not.” He sighed and looked at Kuja. “I’m going to be leaving Pompeii in a few months. My father has signed me up for my military service.”

“Oh? What will you do without your kitchen slave?”

“Shut up!”

The conversation ended as the referee returned to the worn grass. He was followed by two men. One Kuja had seen before, a fighter of little importance from another school. The other man, however, was new to Kuja’s eyes. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a solid frame. His hair was a bit wild, and a bright lapis blue. The man was equipped with a sword and shield, but was wearing no helmet. When he turned to face the crowd, Kuja got a brief glimpse of a patchwork of pale blue lines on the man’s face. There was something mesmerizing about the gladiator, about the way he stood before Pompeii’s elite with a quiet confidence that did not come through from most men on the blood sands.

“Hell, that’s the Blue Death,” Noctis said softly. Kuja’s body jerked slightly--he had nearly forgotten that the younger man was still standing next to him.

“He’s beautiful,” Kuja said to himself. Noctis snorted softly.

“You would say something like that. Don’t let Uncle hear you going on like that. He might think you actually have a soul or something.”

“Watch your mouth.” Kuja returned his gaze to the field.

The two gladiators had touched swords and begun to fight. It was the usual practiced dance, blows striking and looking dangerous but all carefully done as to not really cause any lasting harm to the opponent. There was, however, something a little rougher to the blue haired man’s motions. He hit a little harder than might have been appropriate for non-lethal combat, and his opponent would most certainly have bruises tomorrow. Still, the referee must have seen nothing wrong in his actions because he did not pause the fight. The blue haired gladiator continued with a single minded focus, unrelenting as death.

Kuja was deaf to the cheers around him as the fight continued. Shields were cast aside, and then it was just sword to sword. It only took a few minutes for the fight to end--the blue haired fighter dropped his opponent to the ground, sword poised over his throat. The other man raised his fingers in submission, and the referee called the fight. The men ringing the courtyard cheered as the blue haired gladiator raised his hand in triumph before heading off the field to clear it for the next fight.

Kuja had to admit, he remembered nothing of the other fights. He was too distracted wondering who that brutal blue haired beauty had been. He thought--the victors would be invited to the dinner feast. If Kuja was careful, he could possibly introduce himself to the man then. This caused a flutter in Kuja’s stomach. It had been a long time since anything had made him feel nervous. Actually finding someone or something he wanted to pursue did not come up that often. And what if the gladiator wanted nothing to do with him? He couldn’t really fault the man for that.

Still, Kuja’s interest was piqued, and he had nothing to lose by introducing himself.

 

After the fighting was over, Marcus Petronius Mateus politely congratulated the victors and invited them to join in on the birthday feast. Seymour was not one to pass up a meal, especially one that would be of such higher quality that he was usually given at the gladiatorial school. The victorious gladiators were not actually permitted to dine with the city’s elite, however, and were instead led to a simple set of benches off to the side of the main dining hall. Seymour did not mind. If anything, it meant that he did not have to put up as much effort to be polite to those over his head. 

Seymour sat among the winners and quietly ate. He listened to their conversations, discussions of the fights, of the crowd, of the food. He listened to Reno complain about the wine, and Sephiroth tell the loudmouth that he was lucky that he wasn’t drinking sea water. Seifer had tied in his match but was not present, as he had shuffled off to have a gash in his thigh treated after his match had ended.

“You fought well,” the man sitting next to him rumbled. It was the scar covered fellow, Gladiolus. “Surprised you didn’t draw any blood, though, with your reputation.”

Seymour took a sip of his wine. Reno was right--it was a little too watered down. “It wasn’t necessary for victory. I was trying to make a good impression with Petronius Mateus, not a frightful one.”

“He wouldn’t have bought you otherwise.” Gladiolus stared down at his plate. “Do you think you would’ve killed the man, if they’d told you to?”

“If they had told me to, of course.” Seymour shrugged. “But they didn’t and so I didn’t.” He squinted at the other man. “Haven’t you ever had to kill before?”

“Not on the blood sands,” he murmured. “In war, sure, but clearly I wasn’t that good at it or I wouldn’t be here.”

“Your words, not mine.” Seymour took another sip of wine. “Killing on the blood sands is probably quite different. It’s more intimate. Just you and the other man…”

“And the whole crowd watching and cheering you on,” Gladiolus said with a grunt. “Do you ever worry that you’ll be on the receiving end of that some day?”

“No,” Seymour said. “You have to lose to be on that end of the sword.”

“Everybody loses eventually.”

“I don’t.”

They lapsed into quiet, eating and drinking their fill. As the meal went on, a few people filtered through the assembled gladiators. Mostly women--widows and divorcees and the like--as well as a few men who were interested in renting a bodyguard. They all kept a more or less respectful distance from Seymour, though, perhaps not wanting to test their luck. He knew that back in Rome there had been all sorts of stories made up about him, most of them grossly exaggerated.

Seymour noticed a curious looking person speaking to Sephiroth and Reno. At first glance, he could not honestly tell if the person was male or female, just that they were quite beautiful. Their hair, a purplish silver in color, was done up like a woman’s, worked into braids and covered in a fine golden mesh. They wore a shawl over a tunic with long sleeves that was a bright, cheerful blue, but the figure was small around the chest while still being somewhat thick in the hips and thighs. A strange sight, to be sure. Strange, but not disagreeable.

They glanced his way, and flashed a slight smile.

Reno, being Reno, took immediate notice of this and grabbed them by their slender arm. He tugged them over to where Seymour was seated.

“Let me introduce you to one of our new men!” Reno said cheerfully. “You haven’t been around in awhile, so I don’t think you’ve met Mateus’s new fighters.”

“I haven’t,” they said, voice soft and low in tone. They sounded like a man.

“This is Seymour,” Reno said, gesturing at him. “You saw him fight this evening, right?”

“I did, yes.”

“And Seymour, this is Lucius Caelius Kuja.” Reno gestured at the strange figure. “He kind of manages a senator’s household.”

“You make me sound more important than I am,” Kuja said. Reno laughed and clapped him on the back, earning a blush on the pretty cheeks.

Reno laughed again and turned away, returning to where Sephiroth was seated and reclaiming his mug of wine. Seymour was left alone with the pretty stranger.

“Do you mind if I sit?” Kuja asked.

“Oh, no, go right ahead.” Seymour scooted over on the bench. As Kuja sat, Seymour noticed that the man was barefoot. “No sandals?”

“Not yet warm enough to bother with them.” Kuja folded his hands in his lap and looked up at Seymour. “I saw your fight. I mean, I was in the audience. I was invited.”

Seymour could only wonder what that brief flicker of embarrassment was about. “What did you think?”

“You were brutal,” he blurted out, and then quickly looked at his hands. “I mean that in a good way.”

“A good brutal?”

“Yes.”

Seymour smiled. “Well, that makes me glad to hear. A good brutal was what I was going for. I’m glad you could see that. Everyone else was like ‘oh why didn’t you hack his arm off like that one time’ like that’s all I can do.” He huffed a laugh.

Kuja looked back up at him and smiled. “Lord Mateus would not appreciate you getting blood all over the place. Or the expense of having to pay for the man’s arm.”

“True.” He gazed into Kuja’s pretty face, wondering at the strange facade he was presented with. “Do you know Master Mateus very well?”

It took him a moment to respond. “You could say that, yes. I’ve had business dealings with the man.”

“I see.” He took a sip from his mug. “He seems a decent enough fellow.”

“Petronius Mateus is… ambitious. But not overtly cruel a man. He would make a decent emperor.”

“That’s high praise.”

“High enough.” Kuja shrugged. “There are far worse men in this city, and in Rome.”

“True.” He cleared his throat. “So, have you lived in Pompeii a long time?” He could tell Kuja was not native to the area. There was something too different, too exotic when compared to the other men in Rome.

“It depends on how long you think a long time is. I--” Kuja’s voice faltered, and his fingers went to the shawl draped over his shoulders. Seymour watched, puzzled, as the other man hurriedly pulled the shawl up over his head to conceal his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot about Ravus,” he said in a near whisper. “He must be coming to collect you to go back to the school.”

“Well, yes, dinner is mostly over.” Seymour turned to look over his shoulder. Ravus was indeed standing nearby, speaking with Sephiroth and Gladiolus. “But, why are you hiding--” He felt the bench shift, and when he looked back the other man was up and hurrying off. “Kuja?”

Kuja did not reply as he darted away into the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> History Lesson: On February 5th, 62 AD, an earthquake caused extensive damage in the city of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum. It may have been a warning sign of things to come for the region. By the time our story starts (78 AD), there had been repairs and rebuilding done in Pompeii, but damage was still visible in some places and others were still in ruins.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

It was not long before the lanista rounded up his gladiators and led them back to their school. Seymour sought out Reno as they filed down the sidewalk.

“Hey, Red, can I ask you a question?”

“Hm?” The fiery haired gladiator looked up from the hunk of bread he was eating. “Sure, what’s on your mind?”

“Well…” Seymour rubbed at a sore spot on his arm. “That man you introduced me to, Kuja. You know him?”

“Sort of, yeah. Before Ravus became our lanista, last year? He used to sneak in a few times a month to visit the gladiators.” Reno waggled his eyebrows. “He’s got a thing for them.”

“Well, that’s not a unique interest to have,” Seymour said. “But, what’s up with him and Ravus?”

“Kuja never did any harm, man.” Reno spat into the street. “But Ravus hates him. Says he’ll have Kuja shipped back wherever he came from if he catches him in the school again.” He looked up at Seymour again. “Why?”

“Because we were talking, and then he just bolted like a scared horse as soon as Ravus showed up.”

“Sounds about right. He still sneaks in when he knows that Ravus isn’t in town, but that’s less and less these days.” He sighed. “There’s a few guys at the school who miss seeing him around.”

“You?”

“Well, sure. But, not for the same reason as some of the others.” Reno laughed. “He’s not my type.”

 

To be polite to his host, Kuja remained at the party until guests began to leave. When the crowd had sufficiently thinned, and no one else needed any extra entertainment, Kuja excused himself and headed back home. It was late now, dark already, and Kuja kept his shawl down and his eyes alert as he made his way back to the senator’s estate. Even though this was the better part of the city, there was still always the lingering concern of pickpockets and other miscreants.

His mind wandered a bit, though, even as he tried to keep his attention on the world around him. He thought of the gladiator, the strangely handsome blue haired brute. He was different from the other gladiators that Kuja had held dalliances with before. Usually Kuja's tastes ran more toward the big, mysterious dark men that were brought in to fight. Men like the cestus, Rude, or the bestiarius, Ansem. Those were the sort of gladiators that Kuja tended to satisfy himself with. Not with a fair faced man with bright blue hair and eyes.

And yet, he could not deny that his interest had certainly been piqued.

“You'll get hauled off to a brothel, staring off into the stars like that.”

Kuja started at the gruff voice that sounded next to him. It was Cid, the foreman of the house slaves.

“What are you doing out here?” Kuja asked.

“Making sure you get back to the house in one piece. Don't need the master's wrath upon me if you go missing.”

“I don't need an escort.”

“Says you.” The older man grunted and matched Kuja’s stride. “Really I was just visiting the ladies, if you catch my meaning.”

“Like a rotten fish,” Kuja said. He wrinkled his nose. “I don't care what you do with your allowance.”

“Fair enough.” He leaned in a bit. “So, what’s that dopey look about?” The foreman’s tone was teasing. “You look like some lovesick boy about to write poetry for the old man he fancies.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kuja said.

“Oh, I bet you don’t. Found yourself a new piece of ass to chase after, eh?”

“Shut up, Cid.”

The foreman laughed. Kuja turned his face away, hoping the other man couldn’t see the blush setting his cheeks on fire.

“Nothing wrong with that, pretty boy. We all have to get our satisfactions somehow.”

“Please don't lump me in with your vulgarities,” Kuja said with a light sniff. “I don't come back from my outings reeking of cheap wine and women.”

“No, you smell of something else entirely.” Cid grinned.

They reached the house. The foreman unlocked the main door and held it open. Kuja slipped inside, out of the deepening darkness and into the lamp-lit entry hall. Cid followed, and then re-locked the door.

“So, what's tomorrow’s business?”

Kuja shrugged as he removed his shawl. “Nothing new. More of the same.” He thought. “Perhaps I will write a letter to the master.”

“Better not write anything bad about me,” Cid said.

Kuja just smirked at the foreman and headed off to his room.

 

The next morning dawned bright and warm, quite different from the drizzle of the day previous. Kuja sat out in the courtyard, a length of blank parchment and a pen and ink pot in front of him. He had the intent of writing a report to his master, yes, but his mind annoyingly void of useful thoughts. He liked to send the Senator a letter once or twice a month while he was away in Rome. The usual details--activities in the household, anything interesting that had happened in the city, any useful gossip Kuja had picked up while doing his business about town, and so on. His Master liked to be informed, and Kuja was his agent in Pompeii. Even now, Kuja was still secretly flattered that a man like the Senator put so much trust in a man like himself.

So he sat and stared at the blank page. There were definitely things to talk about--the Senator would certainly like to hear about Petronius Mateus’s party last night. He was a big fan of gladiatorial combat, though never quite enough to purchase any gladiators of his own. 

But, just the passing thought of the previous evening’s festivities was enough to bring the blue haired gladiator back into Kuja mind. Seymour. Why did he keep thinking about Seymour?

“By the gods, why did he have to belong to Mateus? It could have been the other school, or even some shipped in from Rome.” He sighed. “Why Mateus? I can’t even sneak in to see him again, to find out more about him, because of that one armed--” He caught himself and closed his mouth. No, complaining would not fix anything, even if it did temporarily make him feel a little better about this new, strange predicament. No, there had to be a way to keep Ravus from ruining things for him. There had to be.

He had to see Seymour again.

 

Seymour was only half surprised to wake up with a bit of morning wood. His dreams had been interspersed with the image of the beautiful man he had met the night before, and it was only natural that his body would be equally enthusiastic about remembering Lucius Caelius Kuja. He remained rolled onto his side on his little bed, shifting his leg slightly to relieve the pressure on his member. His surroundings were gray with the first hints of the morning light, and the men around him were all still asleep. Seymour closed his eyes and listened to the varying snores around him.

He did not fall back asleep. His mind returned to Kuja, to the strange beautiful man with his feminine charms. Seymour wondered what the man had done to earn Ravus’s ire. From what he had seen so far of his lanista, it probably hadn’t taken much. Ravus was always grim and serious. Even last night after the fights, when some of the most important men in Pompeii had been complimenting Ravus’s training of the gladiators, the lanista had remained seemingly unmoved. No smile, just a polite nod. Seymour wondered if the man had always been like that, or if something that had happened in the past was to blame. Maybe it had something to do with his missing arm?

No matter, Ravus might prove to be a problem if Seymour was ever going to see Kuja again. At least, outside the realm of the blood sands. Seymour was more or less trapped here inside the school, which wouldn’t have been an issue if Kuja could simply walk into the place without incurring the lanista’s wrath.

There had to be something he could do. He just didn’t know what.


	4. Chapter 4

The days went by--nearly a month’s worth of them, in fact, and Kuja made no progress in figuring out how to see or speak with Seymour again. In the meanwhile, Kuja kept about to his usual business, hoping that something might accidentally make their paths cross again. But so far, nothing had. As far as Kuja could tell, Seymour had not ventured outside of the walls of the gladiatorial school since the night they had last met.

Maybe he was making a big deal out of nothing. Maybe Seymour didn’t care, had already forgotten about him, and he was just being silly. It was entirely possible.

Still, it proved to be a daily distraction to his mind, something that he could not help but keep going back to. This was a strange thing for Kuja, something he had not experienced before. The only person who had captured his mind so greatly was the Senator, and that was a different situation completely. There had to be something that he could do.

The answer came to him one afternoon upon his return from the market. When he returned to the Senator’s home, he found the Senator’s nephew loitering outside the front entrance, waiting to be let in. The young man was holding a parcel wrapped in undyed wool.

“There you are, finally,” Noctis said.

“That’s no way to greet a man,” Kuja said glibly. “What are you doing here?”

He gestured with the bundle. “No one would answer the door.”

“I was at the market. We weren’t expecting any business.”

Noctis glanced at his empty hands. “You didn’t buy anything?”

“It’s being sent later.” Kuja used his key to open the door. Inside the house it was quiet. The foreman had likely wandered off for the afternoon, and the slaves were keeping to themselves until they were needed.

Noctis followed him inside. “My father said that his brother had ordered some cheese to be sent in to the house here, but they accidentally brought it to our home and not his.”

“And he had you deliver it here instead of a slave?”

The young man shrugged. “I think my father just wants me out of the house.”

Kuja called one one of the kitchen slaves to retrieve the bundle, and bring some wine and bread to the atrium. He and Noctis sat and ate.

“Did you ever have to fight, Kuja?”

“Hm?” Kuja looked away from the flowers growing in a pot next to his seat. “You mean, as a soldier? No. I was always a slave. That wasn’t my business.”

“Oh.” Noctis rubbed a few crumbs of bread between his fingers. “I’m kind of nervous about having to go. I don’t know how to fight or anything.”

“They’ll train you.” Kuja shrugged. “Besides, you’re the son of a wealthy man. I’m sure you’ll be well tended to.”

“I hope so.”

Kuja studied the Senator’s gloomy nephew. A thought, a little idea, suddenly pricked at his mind. A way that the young man could be of use to him.

A way to get what he wanted.

“I need you to do a favor for me, Noctis.”

“What? Why?” The younger man glanced around uneasily before looking at Kuja once more. “Listen, if this about the porter--”

“It’s not about your kitchen slave,” Kuja said, waving a hand.

“Something my uncle wants, then?”

“No.” Kuja shook his head. “This one is just for me.”

Noctis looked equal shares doubtful and suspicious. Kuja couldn’t entirely blame him. “What is it?”

“There’s a man, one of the gladiators at the school of Marcus Petronius Mateus. I need to speak with him, but as you know I am somewhat forbidden from entering the school.” Kuja pointed at Noctis. “I need you to hire the man as a bodyguard, so that I might speak with him.”

The doubtful look remained. “But, I don’t need a bodyguard. And what makes you think Petronius Mateus will just let me hire your fighter?”

“Because, Petronius Mateus is a very ambitious man, and will not let opportunities to let his standing increase just slip through his fingers.” Kuja picked at the edge of the young man’s tunic. “Tell him that you have been given a task by your uncle, you know, the Senator, to deliver an important message to someone out of town. Stabiae would be sufficient, I think.”

“What makes you think he would believe me?”

“You have a very young, stupid, and trustworthy face, Noctis. Of course he’ll believe you, he won’t think you capable of guile or duplicity.” At Noctis’s glower, Kuja smiled and winked at him. “But, he should know better. You’re the nephew of a Senator, after all, and the son of a wealthy man.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You get a bit of fresh air in the countryside while you make your delivery. And I’ve got some coin saved up, whatever you don’t use for the hiring you can keep yourself.”

“You seem quite confident in this working,” Noctis said.

Kuja chuckled. “Of course I am. I know how Mateus’s mind works.”

 

It was mid-day, unusually hot, and Seymour sat amongst his fellow gladiators while they ate their mid-day meal. He had gotten used to being here in Pompeii, to the daily schedule, to the strenuous training that Ravus subjected his gladiators to. There had not been any more bouts yet, but from what the other gladiators told Seymour there were usually several to be had during the summer months. The summer was the busier time of year, as this was when many of Rome’s elites fled the city to spend the summer on the bay of Naples. Many of them lived in luxurious villas in Stabiae and would hold frequent parties and lavish dinners. Seymour had to admit that he was looking forward to hopefully participating in a few of those fights. 

He was seated at the edge of the courtyard, considering the shapes of the clouds drifting overhead and listening to the other men chat. It was a pleasant way to spend a few free minutes.

That reprieve was broken by the sound of voices of authority coming from the main entrance hall. The men looked in the direction of Ravus’s voice. The lanista strode into view, a shorter young man with black hair at his side. The young man was doing his best to keep his expression serious, but Seymour knew well enough to be able to tell that he was nervous.

“Just one?” Ravus was saying. The young man nodded.

“Yes. It’s a short trip. We should be able to return by the evening.”

Ravus gestured at the lounging men. “Well, take your pick. I’m sure you’ve already discussed payment with Petronius Mateus.”

“I have, yes,” the man said, nodding again. His head turned back and forth as he scanned the courtyard and the gladiators. After a long minute of looking, he gestured in Seymour’s direction. “The blue haired fellow will do. He’s unsettling enough.”

Ravus gave a curt nod. “Very good. Seymour, on your feet. Find your sandals; you have a job to do.”

Seymour got to his feet and dusted off his tunic. “A job, sir?”

“Yes.” He pointed at the young man. “You’ll be serving as this man’s escort for the afternoon. You can discuss the details with him.”

“Yes, of course, sir.”

He put on his sandals and followed the young man out of the school. The young man was wearing a clean white tunic and looked well groomed. Someone of mild import, at least.

“My name is Lucius Caelius Noctis,” the young man said. “I’m making a delivery to Stabiae.”

“I see. So, I’m your bodyguard?”

“Yes, that’s right. Is that agreeable enough for you?”

Seymour shrugged. “I’ve done it before, in Rome. Stabiae isn’t that far from here, is it?”

Noctis shook his head. “No. Maybe five or six miles.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t far at all. They should easily be back before the sun went down.

Seymour followed the young man out of Pompeii. They were stopped a few times on the way out by people greeting Noctis. He supposed the young man was the son of some important fellow in the city, as he certainly wasn’t old enough to be important himself.

The southern road out of Pompeii was not very busy that afternoon. Seymour wasn’t really all that surprised. From what he had learned during his time here, Stabiae was busier during the summer than the spring, and so it only made sense that not as many people would be on the road to Stabiae on a random spring afternoon. His young charge likely could have walked to the town without even crossing anyone, let alone any sort of bandits.

Still, it got him out of having to train for the afternoon and let him get some fresh air. The countryside was beautiful, lush with the spring greenery. Off to his left rolled great green hills, while the mountain known as Vesuvius loomed at their backs. The coast was to their right, and the bay was beautiful and dark blue today. Seymour watched as boats of various sizes drifted on the water, heading to and from one of the many ports that lined the bay.

Soon enough, the pair’s leisurely pace brought the first bayside villas of Stabiae into view. The villas were massive, sitting precariously over the water. It was quiet here, far different from Pompeii or Rome. In those cities, there was never really full quiet. Even late at night, if one was to stand out in the courtyard of the training school, you could still hear voices echoing from out in the streets. But here in Stabiae, the spring air was quiet.

Noctis stopped and muttered to himself, looking down one of the empty streets.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Seymour wondered.

Noctis shot him a glare. “Of course I do. I’ve been here plenty of times--I have family here.”

Definitely the son of a rich man, then.

“This way.” Noctis continued walking.

They reached another villa. Noctis stopped and retrieved an old key from the pouch on his belt, and used it to unlock the gate that was blocking entry to the house. Seymour looked up curiously at the villa--it was old but well kept.

“This place belongs to my grandfather,” Noctis said as they passed through the gate. “But, he tends to only spend his summers here. That’s if he comes here at all--he doesn’t travel much anymore.”

Seymour made a noise of acknowledgement, as the information was not all that pertinent to him. Noctis just seemed to be uneasily talking to fill the silence between them. He opened the front door to the villa--without a key, Seymour idly noticed, as though someone were in fact home.

“This way.” They passed through the grand entry hall and out into a central courtyard. The garden here was watered and well-kept. It seemed, to Seymour, a waste of coin to spend so much money maintaining flowers that no one was around to enjoy. But that was the benefit of being rich, wasn’t it? To waste money on such things.

Noctis pointed at a bench. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Yes, sir.” 

Seymour sat, and waited. That was all he could do. He sat and closed his eyes and waited, tilting his head back slightly to enjoy the warm afternoon light that was filtering through the open roof of the courtyard. It was peaceful here, despite its wastefulness.

There was a subtle shift in the air behind him. Someone was watching him now. Seymour opened his eyes and slowly rose to his feet. He turned slowly, not wanting to startle whomever had been gazing upon his moment of relaxation.

A figure did indeed stand there.

“Seymour.”

Surprise made his memory falter for a moment, but only a moment, because it was quickly recovered from and led to Seymour wondering if he were in fact dreaming. Had he dozed off on the bench?

Standing before him, hands clasped modestly at his waist, was the strange, beautiful young man he had met the night of his first fight in Pompeii. The man who had been teasingly haunting his dreams for days now. His shimmering hair was down today, twisted loosely into a braid that fell along his back.

“Kuja.”

The corners of the other man’s mouth pulled into a shy smile. “I’m glad you made it.”

Made it? Had he been set up? “What do you mean?”

“We don’t have much time,” Kuja said in his soft, low, oddly melodic voice. “Do you want to spend it over those details?”

He moved closer on his bare feet. Seymour met him in the middle, reaching out to touch the man’s bare shoulders. His tanned skin was soft to Seymour’s weapon-worn touch. Kuja smiled again.

“I hope you don’t think this too forward of me,” he said. “But, I couldn’t help it. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to see you again.” His eyes, dark and blue like the bay today, looked up at him, searching his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even know if you cared to see me again. I really could not help myself.” His gaze shifted downward. “It was strange. I could not stop thinking of you, Seymour.”

“Really?” Seymour swallowed. “I must admit, you have been haunting my dreams since that evening. In all honesty, I’m not entirely sure that I’m awake right now.”

“If you are not, I hope this is at least a pleasant day dream for you.” Kuja moved closer. He extended a delicate, long fingered hand to Seymour’s chest. His fingertips curled ever so slightly into the dingy white fabric of Seymour’s tunic. “You feel real enough to me. But, as a dream, this time is fleeting.”

“Was Caelius Noctis in on this?”

Kuja nodded. “Yes. He’s the nephew of my master. He’s also still young and quite easily led along by the nose.”

Seymour smiled. “I’m glad for that, then.”

Kuja glanced up at him, his thumb tracing a slow arc along his chest. “You can touch me, if you’d like. If you would like to further prove my realness to you.”

He looked at his hands, still resting on Kuja’s shoulders. His hands looked big and ugly and brutal against such a delicate canvas. “I’m not sure I should. I’m not sure I’m worthy of touching you.”

“You are if I say you are,” Kuja said. He rose up on his bare toes and pressed his lips to Seymour’s chin. “Believe me, I am barely a man of any worth much higher than a gladiator.”

He swallowed at a lump in his throat. “I find that hard to believe, Kuja.”

“I don’t have time now to explain. That will have to wait for another day.” Kuja’s lips hovered close to his skin. “Would you kiss me?”

“I would be honored to.”

It was a simple thing, that chaste kiss, just a brief pressing of lips together. And yet, despite this, it still sent a thrill down Seymour’s spine. It was a strange feeling, almost akin to the rush he had felt the first time he had emerged victorious on the blood sands. It was a peculiar sensation, for it was not a simple rush of lust that kissing Kuja caused in him, but something else entirely. Something for which he did not have a name.

Kuja’s eyes were half lidded as he gazed up at him. “Your lips are softer than they look.”

“You think so?”

“Let me double check.” Kuja rose up and kissed him again. “Mm. Yes, most agreeable.”

“Have you kissed many men?”

“Only a few that I have wanted to.”

“And you want to kiss me?”

Kuja smiled. “Oh, yes, I do.”

“I'm flattered,” he said. And he was.

Seymour took the other man's hands in his own. He studied the long, graceful fingers with their carefully trimmed nails. Kuja’s skin was smooth; his were not a working man's hands. He had not been one made to toil out in the sun, nor had he been forced to take up a sword and fight. And yet, there was a sturdiness in these hands-Kuja had certainly been through his own set of trials.

“You're quiet. Thinking of something.”

“Hm. I am thinking that I hope we have a chance to share our stories with each other.”

Kuja tipped his head to the side and made a curious noise in his throat. “Our stories?”

“About who we are. How we got to where we are in our lives.”

“Oh.” He smiled shyly. “I do like stories.”

“Good. We'll have to find a way to share them sometime.”

The afternoon breeze brought to them the sound of a bell ringing down by the water. Noctis appeared in the doorway.

“I should be heading back,” the young man said. It took Kuja a long moment to take his attentions from their intertwined fingers.

“Thank you, Noctis, I do appreciate your help.”

Noctis waved a hand and turned away from the courtyard. “Just don't get me in trouble.”

Kuja sighed softly. Seymour gave his hands a squeeze before releasing them.

“I want to see you again,” Seymour whispered.

“I know,” Kuja whispered in return. “I want to see you, too. But, that will have to wait. For now, we will have to take comfort in the fact that we are never truly very far apart. Gaze upon the sun and moon, and they shall be the same that I see. Hold your hand out into the rain, and know the same rain is touching my hand. For now, we will be together in those ways.”

The poetry of Kuja’s words stoked the little fire in Seymour’s breast. “I like those thoughts.”

“Good.” He pressed his lips to Seymour’s cheek. “Farewell, Seymour.”

“Until next time, Kuja.”

 

A few minutes into their return walk, Seymour was pulled from his thoughts by Noctis’s voice.

“I know you aren’t all that fond of your lanista--of Ravus,” the younger man said.

“Hm?” Seymour looked over at him. “He’s as fair a trainer as any.”

“Good. It’s just… he wasn’t always so cold.”

“You know him, sir?”

“I used to,” Noctis said softly. “I used to…” He stopped and half turned, his gaze shifting out over the bay. “Ravus had a younger sister, Tenebraria. Everyone… everyone called her Luna. She was soft and beautiful like the moon. A guiding light in our dark lives. Luna and I were meant to be wed. But, she took ill and wasted away. Ravus was off somewhere fighting a war and losing his arm when she died.” Noctis looked away from the water. “I think he might blame himself for not being there.”

“I see.” Seymour wasn’t sure what to say. Why was the young man telling him this? “I am sorry for you loss, sir.”

Noctis swallowed and continued walking. “Thank you. It’s alright now, I guess. Luna went to the Styx as pure as a Vestal. I’m sure she’s fine now.”

Seymour just nodded. He didn’t know what to say--wasn’t sure really there was anything he could or should say. He just let Noctis have his peace. They travelled the remainder of the distance back to Pompeii in silence.

Only a few hours had passed since Seymour had been called out for the job, and when he returned to the school the other gladiators were just finishing up their training for the afternoon. Noctis thanked him for his service before disappearing into the city. Ravus was waiting for Seymour when he stepped into the courtyard.

“You’re back. I trust all went well?” Brusque as ever.

Seymour thought of what the young man had said, of Ravus and his dead sister. He nodded.

“Yes, sir, it was an easy enough task. The road was very quiet today.”

“Good.” Ravus half turned away. He ran his fingers through his pale hair and stared in the direction of the infirmary. “I’m not sure what I would do if something were to happen to Caelius Noctis.”

“Sir?”

Ravus did not look at him. “You’re free to go eat, Seymour. Thank you for not embarrassing the school.”

“Yes, sir, of course. It was my honor.”

 

Kuja waited until Noctis and Seymour had a sufficient head start before departing from Stabiae. He locked up the property with his master’s spare key, and then set out alone on the road. The afternoon was warm and pleasant, but Kuja couldn’t help but wish he wasn’t walking the road alone. Not for security reasons, no, but more because such a lovely little walk would better be enjoyed with company.

The sun had started its descent toward the waters of the bay by the time he reached his master’s home in Pompeii. He put the spare key away in its box in the Senator’s office, and then went to check on things in the household. He found Cid sitting outside the kitchen playing dice with one of the other slaves.

“How was the afternoon?” Kuja asked. Cid hurried to his feet and straightened the bottom of his tunic. 

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said. “Glad you made it back in one piece, though. Did you find what you were looking for?”

Kuja smiled to himself. “I did, yes. Did I miss anything while I was out?”

“Just the usual. There was a mail wagon in today from Rome. A courier dropped off a letter for you.” He gave a little sniff. “Smelled like it was from the master.” He gestured across the courtyard. “I left it in his office for you.”

“Thank you, Cid.”

“Just doing my job. The kitchen will have dinner ready for you when you want it.”

Kuja went to his master’s office. He lit the lamp that rested on the edge of the desk. The place was fairly unremarkable--despite the room’s title, his master rarely spent any amount of business time in his office. It was more just a place where important documents were kept. There was a new folded piece of parchment on the desk, still sealed with a dark red wax. Kuja noted the familiar imprint of the shape of a skull in the wax before breaking it open.

A faint smell met Kuja’s nose--Cid was right, the letter did smell like their master. It made him feel a strange pang of homesickness. The Senator had barely been home for the winter months, in fact he had not been back from Rome since Saturnalia. Now with spring long in dragging on, Kuja was freshly reminded of the man’s absence by the letter in his hands.

_‘My dear Kuja. I hope this finds you well. I trust it shall, since you have not sent me any letters as of late. Or you have, and I have not yet received them. All the same, I was glad for your last report. It is good to hear that Petronius Mateus and Minius Kefka and the others are still up to their usual mischief. It is just one less thing to occupy my concerns. I do not have much to tell you this time, but I do plan on returning to Pompeii for the summer in another month or two. I will send word before I depart the city so that you have time to prepare the household. Oh dear. I hope that didn't sound like I was treating you like a wife. You know what I mean. Take care, I will see you soon enough.  
\--best of regards, Senator Lucius Caelius Ardyn’_

Kuja smiled as he finished the letter. It was brief, as most of his missives were, but Kuja knew the Senator was a fairly busy many who preferred speaking face to face rather than writing a letter. He had once told Kuja that this was because it was easier to intimidate a man in person than with his messy handwriting. And the Senator was not the sort to hire a scribe to write his letters for him.

Still, Kuja loved the man, messy handwriting and all.


	5. Chapter 5

Seymour found that he was sustained through his endless hours of training by the memory of his brief encounter with Kuja. Through the interminable drills and laps and aching muscles, thinking of Kuja made him feel whole and hale again. The remembrance of Kuja’s lips made his watered down wine taste all the sweeter.

It made him content. It made him happy in a way that a slave should not perhaps feel free to be happy.

He felt a touch disheartened because he could not tell anyone else about these feelings. He had never felt like this before. Certainly he had felt lust before, but what Kuja’s pretty face inspired inside him was not something as uncomplicated as lust. It was something more than that, something that freeborn men wrote poetry about. Something that left him feeling helpless and frustrated, as he could not openly express it, could not be free to be foolish in his actions. He was left lovesick and languishing.

And yet, still happy.

He hid his happiness behind the serious facade of training. It was easy to lose himself in the repeated motions of the drills and the thudding of blood in his ears that nearly drowned out the lanista’s directives.

One afternoon, only a few days after Seymour’s brief venture into the outside world, a delivery was made to the school. It was what in essence was mail from the admirers of the gladiators. It was mostly pretty tame stuff--a few coins from a widow, a maiden’s perfumed hanky, a cute little declaration of love and admiration scribbled on a scrap of parchment, a little package of stuffed dates, and so on. Seymour remembered getting his fair share of those little gifts when he was still in Rome, but had not yet started to garner much attention here in Pompeii. Sephiroth was one of the clear favorites--these deliveries usually contained mostly gifts for him.

Seymour was surprised, then, when a simple piece of parchment was shoved into his hand by the courier. The parchment was folded into thirds, with something written on the back. He was a bit disappointed in himself when he could only make out the word ‘blue’ in the neat handwriting. Seymour looked around the courtyard. Most of the gladiators were teasing Sephiroth over something. Others had already gone off to get their lunch. He noticed Ansem, though, sitting alone off to the side, head bowed in the shadows with his limbs sticking out into the bright sunlight.

He made his way over and sat. “Your scars are looking better, Ansem.”

“The lanista insists upon me drying them out,” the dark man rumbled. He tipped his head to look at Seymour, golden eyes looking first at his face and then to his hands. “You got a note?”

“I did, yes, but I’m afraid I don’t know what it says.” He gave a sheepish laugh. “My reading skills are a bit rudimentary.”

“Don’t need to be able to read to kill a man,” Ansem said. Seymour nodded. “I can read it for you.”

“You can?” Seymour had hoped he could. He seemed like the clever sort. “Would you read it for me?”

“Certainly.” Ansem held out his hand, and Seymour gently pressed the folded parchment into his palm. He looked at the back before turning it over. “It says ‘To the blue haired one’.”

Accurate, Seymour thought.

Ansem unfolded the note and cleared his throat. “‘To my blue haired warrior: You have snared my fancy like a retiarius with his net. If I could have my wish, I would take you far far away, to a place no man has been, where we could dwell in peace, and you would never have to raise a sword again.’” His eyes flicked down. “It’s signed ‘From the one who would kiss you’.”

Seymour considered the message. “Short but sweet.”

“A pity they did not put their name on it,” Ansem said. “Do you know who wrote it?”

“No I don’t, unfortunately,” Seymour said. He smiled. “But, it’s the first token I’ve gotten here while in Pompeii, so I suppose I will have to keep it under my mattress for good luck.”

“Not a bad idea.” The other man carefully folded the note closed and held it out to him. “You’re lucky it’s just a note, and not some woman’s underthings.”

“Oh, I’ve gotten those before.” Seymour chuckled and took the note. He turned it over in his fingers and looked at the writing on the back. “But, I think I prefer this, to be honest.”

 

That evening, when everyone else had gone to bed, Seymour got up and went out into the courtyard. He took the note with him, and looked at it in the glow of the moonlight. He wished he had a bit better understanding of reading. He’d never cared about it before now.

“The same moon, huh?” Seymour tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. Its black surface was speckled with innumerable stars and the glow of the waning moon. He held his hand up to the sky, the moon just visible through his spread fingertips, as though he could hold its gentle glow in his rough palm.

“Are you looking at the moon right now?” he murmured aloud. He gave a soft laugh. “I don’t know if you’re even awake right now. You probably need your beauty sleep, huh.”

Seymour lowered his hand and stared at the sky.

“Thank you for the note.”

 

The moon floated lazily overhead, lounging in a blanket of stars and thin wisps of clouds. Kuja sat on the triclinium porch and watched the moon. He thought of the gods of his youth and the gods of his adulthood, and wondered if any of them at all would be able to help him with his current situation. He thought of the stories that he had heard years ago on his mother’s knee. All sorts of wondrous tales--ones of adventure, of mystery, of romance, of heartbreak. But, what did his mother know of any of these things? She had just been the slave of an unimportant prince, how could she had known any of that at all? Those were just stories that she had been told.

And yet, the stories had stayed with him, hadn’t they? That meant they had to have some kind of meaning, of importance. After all, Kuja could barely remember what his mother looked like, now. He wasn’t even sure if she was still alive. It had been a decade or more now since he had left his birthplace and been taken west. What had become of his mother? What had become of that prince? He supposed he would likely never know, and that it did not really matter now. That life was gone, long passed. He was a Roman freeman now, and not a Persian slave, although in truth for him that title barely held any value.

These were dismal things to think about, especially when the evening was so fair and warm. Kuja shifted his depressing train of thought, and instead wondered if Seymour had been given the note he was written him. It was only after the missive had been penned and given to the courier that Kuja had realized he didn’t even know if Seymour could read. Oh well, if he couldn’t, certainly someone there could. He knew Seifer could read both Latin and Greek, and Sephiroth and Ansem were decent enough with Latin. Surely one of Seymour’s battle brothers would be able to help him.

Kuja looked up at the moon, and felt a little pang in his chest. It was a strange feeling, one he had not felt anything similar to since he had been bought and taken away from Persia. A sad strike of longing, for something lost, for something that would not be his.

“No,” he said softly. “I will not let this go the same way. I am my own man now, and I will do what I have to in order to be happy.”

He just didn’t have a clue as to how he was going to accomplish that, yet.


	6. Chapter 6

It was shortly after the festivities for the summer solstice that the gladiators first noticed it--noticed that something was off with their lanista. It started with a little cough, a soft thing that crept in during his lapses in giving orders on the training field. Then the orders themselves became quieter, subdued.

And then, one morning, Ravus did not come to the gladiator school at all.

The gladiators stood in their usual line and waited, even though they had not been called. They waited, then decided to eat their breakfast. Afterwards, when they reassembled, Ravus still had not arrived.

They debated nominating one of their number to venture out and find out where Ravus was. Had it been another lanista, they might have thought he was home with a hangover, but Ravus was far too uptight to do that sort of thing. He appeared, to them at the least, to hate showing any kind of emotion, or anything else that might be viewed as some sort of weakness. So, too drunk to work was not likely in the case of Ravus. They knew they risked reprimand for leaving the school without permission, but Ravus lived in a small apartment only a block or so away, so perhaps they would not get in too much trouble for their efforts.

Fortunately, their owner arrived before they had made any progress in that group decision-making. If Petronius Mateus was irritated by having to come to them, his face did not give any indication. The only indication of annoyance, from what Seymour had learned of the man, was in the way he ground the heel of his right sandal into the turf as he stepped onto the courtyard. He was not alone, one of the man’s couriers was in tow, holding a wax tablet and a pen and wearing an uneasy expression.

“Good morning, gladiators.” Mateus’s voice was as smooth and untelling as ever. “I am here to tell you that your lanista has taken ill, and will not be able to fulfill his duties for some time.”

“He’s sick?” Reno blurted out. “What kind of sickness, sir?”

“I trust you understand that those are personal matters and not of your direct concern,” Mateus said. “In the meantime, I am entrusting your training to one of your own, Sephiroth, until such time as either Ravus returns to his duties or needs permanent replacement.”

That sounded ominous enough, Seymour thought. He recalled the words from Caelius Noctis some weeks before. Ravus’s sister had taken ill and eventually died. What if that happened here, in Pompeii? Was it a sickness the gladiators needed to worry about, or something more a family matter? He suspected it was the latter, as none of the gladiators had fallen ill despite being around the lanista daily.

 

Fortunately for the men of the gladiatorial school, Sephiroth was not a cruel substitute lanista. He simply had been at the school the longest of the current gladiators, and was most familiar with the routine. And so, in that respect, things did not change very much with Ravus’s absence.

It was evening, after the evening meal, on the second day of Ravus being away from the school. Seymour sat in the courtyard, relaxing his body after another long day of having the stuffing beaten out of it. The evening was warm and pleasant, and at present preferable to being inside. He had his eyes closed, and was just starting to doze off, when his ears caught the sound of a door slowly creaking open on the far side of the courtyard.

He cracked an eye open, curious. There were very few actual wooden doors in the school, mostly just on the periphery of the building. The rest were either open doorways or covered with hanging cloth. The school was not all that big on privacy. So, to hear a door open and close meant someone was either coming or going into the school. 

But who, at this hour?

The answer came soon enough. A barefoot figure stepped out onto the opposite side of the courtyard. They had a dark length of fabric draped over their head and shoulders. Seymour was not sure how, but he immediately knew who the person was. He got to his feet and hurried across the worn grass.

“Kuja?” He whispered. The figure held its hands out to him. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” Kuja said softly. “Are you not glad for it?”

“Of course I am, I just--you said you couldn’t come here.”

“I couldn’t when I was worried about running into Ravus.” He carefully tugged the dark cloth away from his hair. “But, I’m not right now.” He glanced around, and then took Seymour’s hand. “Come, I know a private enough place to speak.”

Seymour let himself be led away from the courtyard and into the equipment storage room. They sat side by side on the dusty floor, knees nearly touching.

“So, you know about Ravus, then. How did you find out?”

“Pompeii is not as big a city as Rome. Gossip and rumors spread quite quickly.” Kuja rested a hand on Seymour’s bare knee. “But, I heard from Noctis.”

“Do you know the young man well?”

“Well enough. He’s my master’s family. When I first came to Pompeii, Noctis had barely begun to sprout hairs on his chin.” Kuja’s other hand traced a finger idly over his smooth chin. “I don’t think we could call each other friends, but perhaps some kind of familial associates. We use each other to obtain advantages.”

“You mean like when we met in Stabiae.”

“That’s right.” Kuja was quiet for a moment, head tilted toward the open doorway. “Noctis told me about Ravus’s poor health today when he came to drop off some misdirected mail.”

“Does that happen a lot? The mail, I mean.”

“A fair amount. There are several Lucius Caelius living in and around Pompeii. The couriers aren’t usually paid quite enough to care to get to the right one. So a letter might go to my master, or his brother Somnus, or their little brother Regis.”

Seymour snorted. “Regis?”

“Noctis’s father. His mother thought very highly of him.” He made a thoughtful noise. “I suppose a letter for Lucius Caelius might go to me now as well.”

“Do you think highly of him? Of your master?”

Kuja was quiet for a long moment before speaking. “He means the world to me. I hold him in my heart.” Kuja sighed. “I suppose you could say that he is the only family I have in this world, now. He adopted me after freeing me, for my protection.”

“Aren’t you a bit young to be freed?”

“Perhaps, but no one seemed to care. I continue to stay here in Pompeii, in my master’s household, continuing the work I did for him when he first brought me here.”

“Are you really free then? If you’re still doing the slave’s duty?”

“Yes,” Kuja said, his tone firm. “My heart is free. Master Ardyn didn’t make me stay on working for him. He would have found other work for me, had I asked. I chose to stay, and he permitted it.”

“I see.” Seymour knew how the whole system worked, but still had his doubts. He covered Kuja’s hand with his own, considering the contrast in texture between them before saying anything else. “I’m sure that is not why you snuck in here.”

“No. I came in to speak with you. To see you again.”

“I can’t see in the dark,” Seymour said. Kuja chuckled.

“I know, neither can I. But my skin can see yours well enough, even in the dark.”

“True.” He ran his thumb over the back of Kuja’s hand. “You aren’t very hairy. Is that a Persian thing?”

“No,” Kuja said. “That’s just a me thing.” There was something careful in his tone, a warning against the subject. Seymour decided to drop the issue.

“I see. So, how have you been?”

“Fairly well. I’ve been getting the household ready for my master’s return in a few weeks.”

“Oh? And what does that entail?”

“Nothing special. Just making sure that everything is thoroughly cleaned and refreshed. New linens for his bed, orders made to fill the larders, slaves brought back to heel.” He chuckled again. “I must admit, the foreman and I are fairly lenient on them when the Master of the house isn’t around. Less decorum, then.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“I suppose. I remember what it’s like. Master is not a cruel man to those who serve him well, and so I shall act as he would in his absence.”

“And what about those who don’t serve him well?”

Kuja again said nothing for a long moment. “He is not a man I would make an enemy of.”

“I will keep that in mind.” And he really would. A senator was not the sort of man to get on the bad side of, especially just as a lowly slave and gladiator. Kuja’s master could probably make Seymour’s life completely miserable if it was his desire. And Seymour was not keen on the possibility of ending up toiling in a mine or something worse for the rest of his painfully short life, even if he was fond of Kuja.

Seeming to note his quiet, Kuja said: “You don’t have to be afraid of him. Just careful. Polite. He doesn’t ask for much.”

“Ask? You mean like… physically?” Seymour could only imagine what a man of power might ask of a pretty slave like Kuja.

“No, actually. Master Ardyn isn’t like that. He’s different.” Seymour felt Kuja’s shoulder move against his bicep in a shrug. “Isn’t in to that sort of thing at all. He hasn’t even gotten married.”

“That’s unusual, isn’t it? Especially among the rich?”

“It is,” Kuja said in concession. “But, I suppose he figures his other siblings have those matters covered. The Caelius line is not in danger of dying out any time soon.”

“I see.” Seymour hoped he wasn’t sounding too intrusive in his questions. “So, he is kind to you?”

“Very. More than I probably deserved. He freed me, after all, entirely of his own volition. No one made him do it or even asked him to.”

“Definitely a strange man.”

“Yes,” Kuja said. “But, that is part of his charms.” There was a warmth in his voice that made Seymour feel a little envious.

“I am glad,” he managed to say. “I am glad that you are not miserable in your life.”

“I used to be, before he came along. I suppose you could say he saved me, as much as a man like me deserves to be saved.”

“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

“I’m not,” Kuja murmured. He sighed again, and squeezed Seymour’s knee. “You weren’t born a slave, were you?”

“No,” Seymour said. “How could you tell?”

“The way you speak. The way you think. It isn’t the same.” Kuja shrugged again. “It’s a subtle thing, but just something I’ve come to notice.”

“I was just a child, nine or ten or so. We lived in the north, a farming community. Nothing special. One day the Romans came, invaded our village. Killed those who got in the way, enslaved the rest. Not a new story, certainly.”

“I’m sorry,” Kuja said softly. “I mean, I know it doesn’t fix anything, but I am really sorry that you had to suffer. Did you lose your family?”

“Not immediately. I was separated from my mother later on. My father died in the attack.” Seymour did not close his eyes, because he was wary of that memory coming back into his mind. “I appreciate your words, though. Few people really care about a slave’s history.”

“Takes one to care.” Kuja squeezed his knee again.

“And, my life isn’t so bad, now. There are far worse fates for a man than to be a gladiator.” He tipped his head toward the other man. “And, besides, if I had never had all of those misfortunes befall me, I would not be here today. And I rather like being here right now.”

“That’s a rather romantic way to look at such a horrible situation,” Kuja said. Seymour snorted a little laugh.

“Yes, well. One has to make the best of their situation, don’t they? No matter how miserable.”

“Do you think we could spend a few minutes not being miserable, then?”

“Of course.”

Kuja shifted his weight, moving away briefly before moving closer again. He straddled the gladiator’s lap. In the dark, Seymour could not see the sights, but his hands immediately moved to Kuja’s legs. The fabric of the man’s tunic bunch up to the top of his thighs, and his skin was smooth to the touch.

“Ah, Kuja!” Seymour felt momentarily lightheaded as a great deal of the blood in his body rushed down to his groin.

“Shh, just kiss me.” Kuja draped his forearms over the gladiator’s shoulders as he leaned in and pressed their lips together. Seymour was not about to protest. He moved his hands to grip lightly at the other’s man’s curvy hips.

They stayed like that, quiet, barely touching, just kissing, for what felt like a long time to Seymour. He heard a distant bell chime, marking the second watch of the night. It was getting late. Kuja sighed against his lips before leaning away.

“I should go,” he said, his voice thick.

“Is that all you wanted from me?”

“For tonight, yes.” Seymour felt the other man’s soft fingertips press against his cheek. “It’s not all I want of you, but it will do for tonight.”

“I want to see you again,” Seymour said.

“I know,” Kuja said, “And, you will.”


	7. Chapter 7

Seymour knew it was wrong to be glad for another man’s illness, but he could not help himself. The next few days, with Ravus away, were great ones for Seymour. Well, not so much the days, but the nights that followed. The days were the usual grind of training and training and training. But, at night, Seymour had started waiting in the equipment storage room once everyone else had gone on to bed. He wasn’t sure how Kuja knew when it was safe, but the man never arrived too early. Seymour would wait, and then Kuja would arrive.

The meetings were not hugely intimate--little more than an hour of quiet talking followed by kissing--but they made Seymour feel immensely happy. He went to bed happy, he woke up happy, he spent the day training happy. It was a nice feeling. 

He knew, however, that it wouldn’t last. Ravus would eventually get better and come back to the school and then Kuja would be afraid to come and visit again. The thought of this filled the gladiator with dread in a way that stepping onto the blood sands never did. He was a gladiator--he was not afraid to lose his life.

But, he was afraid to lose Kuja.

Seymour did not know what to do. There was no one at the school that he could really talk to about his problem. The closest he came was when he had Kuja’s little notes read to him by Ansem. The bestiarius knew that the messages were all coming from the same source. He had noted by the third one that the handwriting was all the same. The little notes were forming a small but growing pile under Seymour’s mattress. He told the others jokingly that he needed all the luck he could get. But, really, he just wanted to keep that bit of Kuja as close to him as he could.

He did not know what to do.

 

Kuja’s ongoing business for the senator meant that he sometimes had to deal with some of the more unpleasant and unsavory elites of Pompeii. One of those men was known as Sextus Minius Kefka. The sixth child of wealthy parents, Kefka was not expected to do anything with his life, and so he had chosen to dedicate his days to being what Kuja could only call an awful deviant. The man was in his forties now, from Kuja’s best guess, but he was still small and thin and pale. He always looked a bit frightful, like a fresh corpse that had changed its mind and come back to life for another round of fun.

Kefka was married, but he had shipped his unfortunate wife and their children off to some town on the other end of the empire years before. Kuja had never seen them, and wasn’t entirely sure they were still alive. Kefka rarely spoke of them, and so Kuja chose discretion and did not ask.

He was lying on the man’s bed, recovering from Kefka’s latest bout of deviancy, and watching the little man pace around the room. He always seemed a little agitated to Kuja, even when he’d just had sex.

“I’ve heard a new rumor, you know, doll,” Kefka said in his ever-shrill voice. He reached the end of the room and turned, continuing his circuit of his lavish surroundings.

“Oh, is that so?” Kuja did his best to sound interested. Kefka had a tendency to lapse into a loud, violent fit of temper if he felt he wasn’t being sufficiently being paid attention to, as many members of Pompeii’s elite society could attest. And with his bottom still being a bit sore, Kuja was more inclined to just humor the man. “Do tell, my lord.”

“It seems that Petronius Mateus is having another bad spot of luck with his lanista,” Kefka said. He wiggled his fingers in the air before him. “Seems he’ll be having to find another replacement.” The man giggled mischievously. “You like to sneak about in there, don’t you? You do, I know you. So you remember what happened to the last lanista that worked for that idiot.”

Kuja thought. It had been nearly two years now. “The previous lanista drowned in the bay.”

“Drowned, or was drowned, hmm?” Another wicked giggle. “The man is cursed, I tell you.”

“It could just be coincidence. Or bad luck.”

“Pah, that man is always plagued by bad fortunes. Why, I’d be surprised if his little wife doesn’t die on him in childbirth!”

“That’s a cruel thing to say,” Kuja said in quiet protest. “Petronius Mateus loves his wife.”

“Yes, I know. It’s disgusting.” Kefka gave a little huff and turned on his heel. “I want you to keep your nose in his business for me, you hear me?”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Oh, the usual payment. The usual bonus.” He winked lewdly at Kuja. The younger man had enough practice not to cringe while the elder was looking. “I’ll have to set up another appointment with you for the summer…”

“Yes, my lord.”

Kefka gestured at a little leather pouch next to the bed. “Your payment, as agreed upon.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Kuja didn’t really like taking the payment. It made him feel a little too low, even lower in station than he already was. He was not, he told himself, some prostitute. The payment wasn’t for the sex, the payment was for the gossip and information that Kuja shared. The sex was, as Kefka put it, the bonus. Though, more for the giver than the recipient. It was the same with Petronius Mateus and several other important men in the city. Kuja kept them interested, kept them informed, and in turn they both kept Kuja informed of their own gossip and maintained their loyalty to the senator.

It was how things had been since before he had been freed, and now he did not know how to go about changing them without ruining all the carefully laid connections. So, he did not change anything all.

 

There was a courier waiting outside the front entrance to the senator’s home when Kuja returned from his business with Minius Kefka. It was one of the boys that Mateus used for his message running. What was it now, Kuja wondered. He already had a sore bottom from dealing with Kefka, and he wanted to be in a proper state to go visiting with Seymour that evening.

“Hail, Caelius Kuja,” the courier said politely. He held up a folded piece of parchment. “I bear a message from my master, Marcus Petronius Mateus.”

“I know who you’re from,” Kuja said. The boy shrugged.

“Just fulfilling my duties, sir.” He held out the letter. “I’m to wait for a reply.”

Kuja took the folded parchment and opened it. To his surprise, he did not immediately recognize the handwriting. It took him a moment to realize that it had not been penned by one of Mateus’s scribes, but rather by the man himself. That only happened when the message was something the magistrate wished to keep secret.

Curious now, Kuja smoothed his fingers over the inscription and began to read.

_‘Kuja. I have come to some measure of concern over the health of a man in my employ. I wish to hire you for services to aid the man. Please come to my residence tomorrow morning after the third bell so that we might discuss services and payment. Regards, M. Petronius Mateus.’_

“Ever to the point,” Kuja murmured. He looked at the courier. “Tell your Master that I will come as he has called.”

“Thank you, sir. Good evening.”

Kuja watched the lad scamper off into the twilight. He thought. He knew most of what men of Pompeii were in the employ of Petronius Mateus. He owned and fronted various businesses, as well as the gladiatorial school and a winery outside of the city proper. Most of the employees, if that were the right word for them, of these businesses were slaves, as was the custom. Most of the gladiators were slaves, the men toiling out in the vineyards were slaves, and most of the behind the scenes people at his shops were all slaves. Kuja knew Mateus well enough that he would not word any of them as being ‘in his employ’. He wouldn’t probably care enough to hire extra assistance in their care. The gladiators were already well kept with their medici on permanent hire. The slaves in the vineyards were not specialized and unfortunately viewed as being more expendable.

So it did not take much deep thinking to guess who Mateus wanted some special services for. The only man he knew of offhand who was in poor health and not a slave was the lanista, Ravus.

Kuja went inside and bolted the door behind him. He did not like the thought of having to do any sort of kindness to the lanista, especially since none had been shown him in return. He was a freeman now, he didn’t have to do anything he didn't want to. And yet, he knew that wasn’t really true at all, was it? He was still bound by social rules, by expectations that had been placed upon him. He had to maintain his connection with the magistrate, both for his own well being and for the senator’s happiness. He owed everything to Caelius Ardyn, and could not fail the man.

 

And so, the next morning, he left the senator’s home just after the third bell and made his way through the streets of Pompeii. It was mid-morning and the traffic was not too busy. Kuja almost wished it was, but he also did not want to arrival unacceptably late. Petronius Mateus could be a bit of a stickler about those things.

The guard at the door let Kuja in without a word of question, just a nod and the instructions to wait for the master of the house in the parlor. Kuja did as he was told, sitting on a padded bench in the quiet room. The lord of the house arrived a few minutes later. Kuja was surprised by how drab he looked in a plain off-white tunic and modest leather belt. He looked almost normal. Mateus was usually the sort to wear his tunics dyed and his belts ornately tooled and adorned.

Kuja got to his feet. “Is everything alright, sir?”

“Ah, yes.” Mateus glanced down. “I was at the temple.”

“Oh, I see. That’s good of you.”

Mateus squinted down at him. “You’re a well informed man, Kuja, and so I am quite certain that you are aware that Tenebrarum Ravus has fallen quite seriously ill.”

“I’d heard of the matter, yes,” Kuja said, doing his best to keep his tone and expression even. The right corner of Mateus’s mouth quirked.

“I know that you are not fond of the man, nor he of you. I have heard about all of that business.”

If you know that, then why call me here? Kuja wondered, but tried to keep it off his face. “That is also true, sir.”

“Because of this, what I’m asking of you will be a favor. I will still pay you, of course, but a favor all the same.” The magistrate turned slowly on his heel and padded out of the parlor.

Kuja followed. “Go on, my lord. Why did you call me here?”

“You have a uniquely lovely singing voice, Kuja,” Mateus said. “I know, I’ve told you that before. I want you to use that voice to pray to the gods, to Apollo, to whoever might listen, in order to return Tenebrarum Ravus to health.”

He stared at the older man’s backside. “Pardon my doubts, sir, but surely a good lanista is not that hard to find?”

“That is not the matter.” The magistrate looked over his shoulder for a moment. His expression was serious. “I owe the Tenebrarum family a debt. Bringing Ravus back to health would… help relieve that debt.”

“Ah, I see. You are a man who dislikes your debts.”

“I am.” Mateus looked at him evenly. “Well then, will you do this for me?”

“I did not know I had a choice in the matter, my lord,” Kuja said. Mateus blinked a few times and shook his head.

“Of course you do, Kuja. You’re in the charge of a Senator, I couldn’t possibly force you to do anything.”

“And, if I wasn’t?”

He shrugged. “I would just offer you more money.”

“Fair enough, sir.” He suppressed a sigh.”I will do this for you, then. You can pay me my usual fee.”

“Agreed.” Mateus offered the faintest hint of a smile. “In fact, I will pay you double if it works.”

 

Kuja thought of what he knew of the local gods as he made his way toward the gladiator school. They were a complex lot, borrowed and reformed from other religions, as was the Roman custom. He did not know a great deal of the stories, and was not really well versed in the prayers as he did not usually go to any of the temples. He had some better remembering of the songs and prayers from his childhood, and supposed that he could probably make something up. He could speak and sing in Persian, and no one around would know what he was really saying. As long as it sounded pretty and reassuring, that was all that really mattered.

He arrived at the building where Ravus lived, and followed the directions Petronius Mateus had given to him up to the lanista’s apartment. The building was cramped and the other tenants were noisy. Kuja knew he had arrived at the correct door when he spotted one of Mateus’s kitchen slaves kneeling in front of a door. Mateus had told him that he’d sent the slave to make sure his lanista was being taken care of.

The young woman scrambled to her feet, apologizing in what sounded like Greek.

“I have been bringing him the food and the wine,” she said in rough Latin. “He sleeps most of the time.”

“Thank you. Stay out here. Your Master, Petronius Mateus, has asked for me to pray for the man.”

She squinted at him for a moment, but then nodded and opened the door. She murmured: “Yes, pray for the dying man.”

Ravus’s apartment was a single small room, fairly standard for the area. The room was lit by a lone lamp, its low flame casting meager light onto the sparse furnishings. The lanista occupied his simple bed, lying on his side. Even from the doorway Kuja could hear the slight wheeze to the man’s breathing. His skin was discolored, pale and yet flushed with fever in spots, his closed eyes were sunken, his hair oily, and his tunic clung to the sweat on his body.

The lanista did not move. Indeed, Ravus gave no indication whatsoever that he knew Kuja was there. Had he been aware, Kuja would have already been threatened and thrown out. He was just there, asleep or unconscious, waiting to die. Despite their differences, Kuja could not help but feel a twinge of pity for the man.

“Ravus,” Kuja said softly. “I come to you at the behest of your patron, Petronius Mateus. He sent me here to pray for you, that the gods might offer you another chance.” He huffed a sigh and shook his head. “I swear, sometimes that man is as peculiar as your gods.”

Ravus did not move.

Since there was no seat, and he rather would not subject himself to sitting on the lanista’s dirty floor, Kuja instead chose to lean against the wall. It was warm with the afternoon heat. He closed his eyes and emptied his mind, waiting for the right words to come to him. 

He sang softly, mixing a tune from long ago and far away with a story his mother had told him when he was ill as a child. No, not when he was ill, when he was recovering from something bad that had happened to him. He sang until the memory had run its course in his mind, and until he began to feel weary from the effort and the heat.

“I should warn you,” Kuja whispered at the motionless man. “Your master is paying me to come and pray for you every day until you either recover or die. I know you hate my presence, so if I were you I would hurry up and make your choice.”

Ravus was silent.

 

When Kuja departed from the small, sad apartment, he made an immediate trip to the gladiatorial school. He knew it was still morning and the men would be practicing, but he went all the same. He sat at the edge of the courtyard and watched the men. They were working on sword movements today, and Kuja quietly delighted in the men and their work. He spotted Seymour near the back, going through sword motions with a burly blond man.

Kuja’s observations did not last long, though. It only took a few minutes for one of the men to notice Kuja sitting there and point it out to the others. The practice was quickly half abandoned, with many of the gladiators ignoring a huffed sigh from Sephiroth and hurrying over to stand around Kuja.

“Well, look here, a flower’s growing in our courtyard,” one of the men said.

“Now, what’s a pretty face doing in an ugly place like this?” Reno said playfully. “What if Ravus were to show up right now, huh?”

“I am not concerned,” Kuja said, keeping his tone light. He looked around the crowd. Seymour was not amongst them. “Isn’t it enough that I wanted to come visit you all?”

“It’s been a long time,” Rude said in his rumbly voice. There was desire in his eyes, but Kuja just gave his head a light shake and looked away.

“It has, yes. But that is life.“ He made a show of looking around again. “So, have you boys been keeping busy? Getting ready for your summer bouts?”

“You know it!” Reno said in a chipper tone.

“What about Ansem? Has he mended?”

“He still looks like shit,” Seifer said. “But he’s back training with us now.” He slapped an arm on his right bicep. “Got to get back up to speed.”

“Oh, I see. That is good to hear.” Another look behind his gathered admirers showed Kuja that the dark bestiarius was indeed off in the corner of the courtyard, quietly hitting a dummy with a training sword. “And the men your Master bought this winter? How have they been faring?”

“The German lost his first bout back at that party at the master’s place,” Reno said. “But Seymour’s been doing great. You remember him, right? Met him after the party.”

“The blue haired fellow? With the blue scars on his face?”

“Yeah, that’s him,” Rude said.

“I do recall him. That sort of appearance is difficult to forget.”

Reno yelled over his shoulder. “Yo, Seymour! Come over here and show some manners to our visitor!”

The blue haired man said something that Kuja could not hear at the distance of one of the training dummies. Seymour ambled over, training sword resting on his right shoulder. Kuja felt his heart give an excited thump in his chest as the man approached. He hoped the other men could not sense his reaction to seeing Seymour. He really was a beautiful thing to behold in the morning sunlight.

Seymour gave a little smile and a polite head nod. “My apologies. I was quite wrapped up in my training.”

“This is Lucius Caelius Kuja. You remember him, right?”

Seymour made a thoughtful noise. “Of course I do. From the birthday party, yes?” He smiled. “How could I forget such a lovely face?”

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Seymour,” Kuja said.

“I am flattered that you remember me, a humble man of the blood sands.” Seymour winked at him, and the other gladiators burst out laughing.

“You be careful, Kuja,” Seifer said. “Seymour here’s a real smooth talker.”

Kuja smirked at him. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

 

The men went back to training, then, leaving Kuja to his thoughts at the edge of the grass. He tried to do as he used to do, giving the men all equal looks. Back in days past, when he was aware that Kuja had been sneaking in to watch the gladiators, Petronius Mateus had used to tease him during their meetings and ask what Kuja had thought of the state of his men. With Ravus, though, those days had faded into memory.

So too had Kuja’s desire to look at all the men. Now his eyes kept drifting back to Seymour, watching the way his muscles worked, how the muscles of his back showed through the sweaty tunic that clung to his skin, how he made everything he was doing look so effortless.

Perhaps coming here during the day had been a bad idea, he thought. He might give away the game, if he couldn’t stop staring at Seymour. But, for all the truth in that thought, Kuja could not help himself. He had spent far too long not being able to see the man at all, or to not really be able to see him and only feel his firm presence in the evening shadows. To see the man in the light of day was an indulgence he simply could not deny himself.

And why should he not? He had done Mateus’s task for the day, and Cid had the slaves at their master’s home well organized enough that Kuja should be able to take a day off without everything falling to pieces.

So he sat, and watched, and thought.

 

Seymour had been surprised by Kuja’s unannounced visit to the school. He had not stopped by the night before, and sent no word as to why. And now, here he was, just sitting idly in the grass as though he had every business in the world being there. Seymour didn’t mind, of course, it was just a bit off-putting. He hung back, continuing his practice until Reno loudly called him over. And then, he had to play it cool, as though his heart wasn’t pounding just looking at the pretty young man.

He wanted to get Kuja away from the others, to ask him what was going on, but he couldn’t. He was still bound to his duties, to his training, and could not just sneak off in the middle of the day. Sure, Sephiroth was a reasonable enough fellow, but Seymour did not want to risk either his ire, or that of Petronius Mateus or Ravus, should he be fortunate enough to recover.

So he had to wait until the mid-day bell rang and the gladiators were given a break to rest and fill their bellies. Seymour hung back as the other man hurried off to the dining hall, and then attempted to look casual as he made his way over to where Kuja was still lounging.

“Can I talk to you?” He asked once within earshot.

“Not now,” Kuja said. “There are ears listening.”

“There are always ears listening,” Seymour said.

“You know what I mean.” Kuja brushed a stray lock of shimmering hair back from his face. “I’ll be leaving soon, anyways. I just… I wanted to see you with the sun on your skin.”

“It looks good on yours, although it’s making your cheeks a bit pink.”

He smiled coyly. “That’s not just the sun’s doing.” Kuja waved a hand toward the dining hall door. “Go, get something to refresh yourself with. I will come by tonight.”

“You promise?”

“I don’t like making promises, Seymour. They just tempt the gods into giving us trouble.” Kuja nimbly got to his feet and brushed a bit of brown and green from his tunic. “But, I will do my best to see you.”

“Good.” 

 

It seemed to Seymour like a very long time until nightfall, but eventually the last bell of the day rang and then the bell for the second watch of the night rang, and he was finally seated in the dark confines of the storage room. He waited, straining his ears against the sounds of the night, until he finally heard the sound he was waiting for: that of the far entrance door squeaking open and shut. He watched the play of moonlight on the wall until it was blotted out by a person’s arrival.

“I’m sorry that I’m so late,” Kuja said in a whisper. Seymour tilted his head to look at him, silhouetted in the moonlight like some strange spirit.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I just wanted to be here with you. I do not mind having to wait.” 

Kuja sat next to him in his usual spot and pressed his left knee to Seymour’s right. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“What happened?”

“I just--” He sighed. “I just couldn’t make it.”

“I see.” Seymour didn’t, but he knew better than to pry in men’s business. “So, what brought you here during the day?”

“I knew Ravus wasn’t here, wasn’t going to be here,” Kuja said. “And it had been so long since I had a chance to come and see everyone, I just… came here. No ulterior motive.”

“You didn’t come here to see me?”

“Of course I did.” Kuja rested his head on Seymour’s shoulder. “But, you have to understand, I’ve been visiting this place for years, since before most of the current men were even brought here. I would suppose I consider some of them to be my friends.”

“Friends?” Seymour wasn’t sure he had ever really considered his fellow gladiators to be his friends. Certainly most of them weren’t too bad, and some of them were quite kind to him, but he had not put deeper thought into the matter.

“That’s right.” Kuja inhaled and then exhaled slowly through his nose. Seymour felt the tickle of his breath against his arm. “So, while I did want to see you, I wanted to see them, too. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Seymour said. “It’s just… it is something to think about, that’s all.”

“Okay.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, just enjoying each other’s presence. Kuja lightly ran the nails of his right hand up and down the length of Seymour’s forearm.

“Before I came here this morning, I was working.”

“‘Working’?” He tried to remember what Kuja had said about his work. “Dancing and singing or the other kind of work?”

“Singing, more or less,” Kuja said. His hand stilled. “I had to do something I did not really care to do.”

“Then, why do it?”

“Politics, mostly. It’s a busy, messy thing.” He sighed. “Don’t even let yourself be owned by a politician. It can be quite messy.”

“Too late for that,” Seymour said wryly. Kuja chuckled.

“Yes, that’s true. How could I forget.”

“I wish it were so easy for me to forget.” Seymour covered Kuja’s hand with his own. “It is alright. I don’t hold that against you.”

“Good. Though, don’t you ever think of gaining your freedom?”

“Of course I do. I don’t know what slave doesn’t.”

Kuja didn’t say anything.

Seymour cleared his throat. “But, I am too valuable a commodity as a gladiator. No owner of mine would willingly just let me go. Not at least until I become too injured or old to fight. And even though I could be valuable at that point.” He shook his head slightly, not wanting to jostle his companion. “No, the only way I’ll gain my freedom is on the blood sands. Either in death, or by earning my wooden sword.”

“You could do it, you know,” Kuja said softly. “Win your freedom, and… and…” 

“I could try,” Seymour said. He cleared his throat. “So, what were you doing this morning that you did not want to?”

“I was summoned by your master. He… he wanted me to pray for Ravus. To sing to the gods in his appeal.”

“Why would he do that?” 

“Petronius Mateus said he owed the Marcus Tenebrarum family a favor. And that if he did this and Ravus returns to health, then he would consider that debt paid.”

“And you said yes.”

Kuja sighed. “I had to. Politics, remember?”

“I’m sorry you had to be put into such an unpleasant position,” Seymour said. “Hells, I wonder what really is wrong with Ravus. I mean, the man survived losing an arm. He must be as steady and solid as stone.”

“Who knows?” Kuja made a noise in his throat. “He didn’t acknowledge my presence. I’m not sure if he was even awake, to be honest, or at the least aware. He never opened his eyes the whole time I was there. It was like praying before a corpse before it was placed on a funeral pyre.”

“Do you think he will die?”

“I don’t know,” Kuja said. “All I know is that I have to keep singing for him. If he lives, if he dies, it doesn’t really matter as long as I sing.”

“I’m sorry.”

Kuja did not reply, and Seymour himself did not know what else to say. It was a strange predicament to be in, morally. Not that he had any real say in any of the business going on around him, but he still found himself strangely invested in what happened to the lanista. With Ravus away and ailing, Kuja was free to come in and visit Seymour and the other gladiators without fear of being deported. If Ravus recovered, he would return to the school and Kuja would have to stay away again. If Ravus were to succumb to his illness and perish, then the school would need another lanista, and who knew what kind of person that man would be.

He did not wish for the lanista’s death, but he also did not really wish for his return to health, either.

“Do you think the gods hear your prayers?” Seymour asked.

“They do,” Kuja said. “Whether or not they choose to actually hear them is a different matter. I am just a meager, incomplete man. I cannot make a god do anything. All I can do is entreat them to listen, to hear, to respond, and making my prayers beautiful and appealing by song is the best option I have for that.”

“Does it work?”

“Maybe it does, maybe it does not. I do not usually pray for myself.”

“Could you pray for me?”

Kuja’s weight shifted slightly away, his head moved as though he were trying to look up at him in the dark. “For you? What do you need prayers for, Seymour?”

“To keep me safe on the blood sands. To bring me to victory.”

There was something chiding in Kuja’s tone now. “Seymour, you’ve never needed any help from anyone else to win before. You did not earn your nickname and your fame because someone else was praying for you.”

“It couldn't hurt.”

“You don’t know that.” He rested his head on Seymour’s shoulder once more. “In such matters, it is better not to test your luck. Your own offerings and prayers before combat were clearly what the gods have wanted, and not anyone else’s. That is why they have brought you victory.”

Seymour knew Kuja’s words were true. If the gods had not accepted Seymour’s own prayers, he would not have won all of those bouts. But, still… “I want to hear you sing.”

“What? Is that what this is about?”

“It isn’t fair,” Seymour said. “That someone you loathe is permitted to hear your beautiful voice, but I cannot.”

Kuja sighed. “I cannot sing right now, Seymour. Someone will hear me--that is, someone we don’t want to overhear will hear me.”

“Someday, then. I want to hear you sing.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then said: “Here in Pompeii, your bouts will likely all be either at private parties or similar special events. I shouldn’t have much trouble getting into any event in town. You win your fights, and I will sing to you at the reception afterwards.”

“You promise?”

“As much as I can promise, yes.”

Seymour smiled. Kuja’s words filled him with more strength than perhaps the man knew. “Then, I will do my best, so that I might hear your song.”


	8. Chapter 8

Four days passed. Four more days, four more mornings where Kuja had to make his way to the apartments where Tenebrarum Ravus dwelt. Four more mornings where he had to lean against the wall of that stuffy little room and sing to a man who was completely unaware of his presence. He knew that Mateus was paying him for his work, but Kuja could not help but be a little disheartened to have to spend his time and talent on a man who could not hear him, and likely wouldn’t want to if he could.

When Kuja arrived on the sixth morning, he was surprised to find a different slave sitting in front of Ravus’s door.

“Good morning, Caelius Kuja,” the slave said. “The master said I was to tell you that Ravus woke up last night.”

“Oh, is that good?”

“We do not know,” they said. “He was not awake for very long.”

“I see. Shall I still pray for him?”

The slave nodded and moved aside.

The scene inside Ravus’s room did not seem to have changed. The lanista was still on his side, eyes closed, skin splotched and sweaty. His silvery hair was an oily mess, and Kuja couldn’t help but pity the man for having to go so long without bathing. After all, being able to go to the baths was one of the perks of living in a Roman settlement.

“Well, at least they’ll bathe your body if you die,” Kuja said softly.

He closed his eyes and sang a prayer, as he had the previous days. It was nothing new--just a rehash in Persian of what he’d sung before. Hoped the gods, were they listening, understood his inherent lack of sincerity and did not hold it against himself or Ravus or Mateus.

When he was done, he kept his eyes closed for another minute, trying to calm him mind. Opening his eyes revealed a startling sight.

Ravus’s eyes were open.

Not widely--his pale lashes had parted enough that Kuja could just see the bloodshot whites and dark azures of his eyes. And he was definitely looking at Kuja. There was a fresh grimace on the lanista’s wasted features. Kuja swallowed. He wasn’t sure if he should say something to the man. An apology, perhaps?

Instead, Ravus’s eyes slowly closed. Kuja wasn’t sure what to make of this, but then the lanista, with a grunted effort, rolled over onto his other side. Kuja took that as a good enough sign and departed from the room.

 

He did not go to the gladiatorial school after leaving. Not immediately, at the least. First, he went to one of the bubbling fountains. He got a drink of water, hoping to clear his mind and soothe his throat. Then Kuja went to the markets and picked up a package from one of the fruit vendors. His last stop was at the home of Marcus Petronius Mateus.

“Ah, thank you, Kuja,” Mateus said when Kuja was let into the house and directed to its master. Mateus was reclining on one of the couches in the triclinium and staring lazily at a wax tablet. “You may leave the package here; it is for my wife.”

“That’s a lot of honeyed dates, my lord,” Kuja said with a smile. Mateus chuckled.

“Well, yes, she is eating for two, isn’t she?” Mateus set the tablet down on the stone floor in front of him. “She’s doing well, at the least. That’s all I can ask for, right now. So if she wants dates, she gets dates.”

“I’m glad to hear she is doing well. The weather is starting to warm up more.”

“It is, but she will manage.” Mateus gestured at his stomach. “She looks like she swallowed a melon whole.”

“Yes, that does happen.”

Mateus was quiet for a moment, scratching at the stubble on his chin. “So, tell me, have you been to pray for Tenebrarum Ravus today?”

“I have, yes,” Kuja said. “Today he opened his eyes, made a rotten face at me, and then turned over in his bed like a child who did not want to go to his lessons.”

“Did he now? That is quite an improvement, don’t you think?”

“I can only hope so,” he murmured. “If he improves any further, I might suggest having a few of your men dragging him out to the closest baths to have him freshened up. I’ve seen mouldering corpses on the roadside that looked less frightful than he does right now.”

The magistrate chuckled again. “Thank you, Kuja, I will keep your suggestion in mind.”

 

The next morning, when Kuja went to pray for Ravus, he found the lanista in the same position he had left him the day before. When he sang this time, he made an effort to do so in Latin instead of Persian, as his audience might actually now be aware of what was being sung for them. Ravus, of course, was silent and unresponsive, and with his back turned Kuja was not even sure the man was awake.

The morning after that, however, when Kuja arrived, the lanista was seated in bed. Well, not so much seated upright of his own accord, but more propped and leaning against the wall. He still looked bad, Kuja thought. Ravus’s eyes half opened as Kuja shut the door behind him. His dry lips moved, and Kuja could barely hear the words that were rasped out.

“You are a repulsive, unnatural creature,” Ravus grated out. “Why would the gods listen to you?”

“Perhaps they have nothing better to do.”

Ravus closed his eyes and turned his face away. He was silent as Kuja sang, and silent as the younger man departed from the room.

 

“He’s less dead today,” Kuja said as he sat next to Seymour in the courtyard during the gladiator’s meal break. “Though, I am not entirely sure I am glad for that.”

“That isn’t a very kind thing to say,” Seymour said. “Even if it is how you feel. Ravus is a fighter.”

“It is still how I feel.” Kuja picked at the edge of his pale blue tunic. “He is a hateful man.”

Seymour had never seen this hateful action in person. The lanista, while cold, had always seemed fair enough in his actions. He was dealing with slaves, after all, and could be forgiven for any harshness.

“Why do you think he is hateful, Kuja?”

He had asked this question of his companion before, but Kuja had always been evasive about the answer. The younger man usually chose to just change the subject when the issue of Ravus and his ban on Kuja’s presence came up in conversation. Again, now, he expected the conversation to be steered in another direction. Kuja was quiet, rolling the bottom edge of his tunic between the thumb and forefinger of both hands. Seymour continued to eat his mid-day mean as he waited, dunking a piece of bread into a small bowl of stinky fish sauce.

Finally, Kuja spoke again. 

“I… I did not have a chance to meet Tenebrarum Ravus properly when he first became the lanista here. I had not even known that the man had been hired. I knew of him, because I knew Caelius Noctis was intended to marry his sister. But, he was away fighting somewhere during all of that.”

That was right, Seymour thought. Kuja had told him that Ravus had been away when his sister had taken ill and died. That he blamed himself for not being there. As though he could have done anything to save the girl. He nodded at Kuja.

“As I said, I never met him before. The Tenebrarum family lived over at the port in Misenium and never really ventured over here. Military family and all that.” Kuja made a little noise in his throat. “I did not know he had been hired, though I knew Mateus was in the market for a new lanista. Well, the first time we met was when I was, um…” He let out a little embarrassed laugh. “I guess you could say I was in an indelicate position with one of the gladiators. Ravus was, to put it nicely, repulsed by me.”

“Specifically you?” Seymour couldn’t imagine why Ravus would be repulsed by someone as lovely as Kuja.

“Yes. Specifically me.” Kuja sighed. “And that was more or less the beginning and the end of the matter. I was immediately banished from the school by Ravus, and the gladiator I was in the midst of being intimate with was traded away not long later.”

“Rather harsh.”

“I know. Ravus is just that sort of man, unfortunately. He finds it difficult to see things beyond absolutes. It’s black and white or nothing at all.” Kuja snorted. “Which is funny, really, because if you were to look close enough, his eyes aren’t the same color. One is a bit darker than the other.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Seymour said. He finished his food and wiped his hands on his tunic. Kuja picked at the grass.

“It has been a rough time, being denied my preferred form of entertainment.”

He wondered what the man meant by that. “Is that what I am to you, then? Just entertainment?”

“What? No, of course not. If you were just a distraction to me, don’t you think I would have lifted your tunic already?”

He swallowed. “I suppose so. When I got used for that sort of thing in Rome it was usually a lot more immediate. And less…” He struggled for a proper word. “Less emotionally intimate. They were just drawn to the muscles and the glamour and the perceived danger of it all. They just wanted a wild fuck.”

“I mean, I would be lying if I were to say I wasn’t attracted to the muscles and the mystique,” Kuja said. “But, you already know that about me. I told you that from the beginning.”

“You did, thank you. Your candidness is refreshing.” Seymour considered Kuja’s problem. “What about lord Mateus?”

“Hm? What about him?”

“When Ravus banned you from the school, did you ever go to Petronius Mateus to ask for a reprieve? You know, to override what the lanista said? I mean, it’s his school and Ravus is his employee.”

“No,” Kuja said very softly. “I did not want to test my luck. My business with Petronius Mateus is a delicate matter enough as it is. I didn’t need to go risk messing it up just so I could have a bit of fun on the side.”

“Oh.” That seemed like an unfortunate and unpleasant position to be in. “I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t apologize.” Kuja sighed and flicked a broken blade of grass from his fingertips. “I just need to be patient, that’s all.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’m just waiting. That’s all I can do.”


	9. Chapter 9

It was raining the afternoon that Tenebrarum Ravus returned to the gladiatorial school. The men were out training anyway, doing their best to keep their footing on the slick grass. It wasn’t raining hard enough to be painful, and so the men were enjoying the reprieve from the usual heat of their business.

Their lord and master, Marcus Petronius Mateus, strode into this scene with his usual quiet, dignified confidence. He did not go out into the rain himself, rather he let the men notice his presence and assemble before him. He had a few aides behind him, and standing off to their side was the lanista, looking nearly unrecognizable to the gladiators.

Seymour stared at Ravus, surprised. He knew what Kuja had told him of Ravus’s condition, that the man looked close to the point of death, but to see the results in person were quite startling. The man’s tunic hung somewhat loose on his side, and the arm and legs that were visible were thinner than they had been a month before. Ravus’s hair was poorly kept and his face was unshaved. Seymour would have mistaken him for a beggar on the street if it were not for the man’s eyes. For, despite the otherwise obvious effects of his illness, Ravus’s gaze was just as cold and piercing as it had been when last they saw him.

It was clear to Seymour that the lanista wanted no pity for his current condition. He had been through worse, he would recover, and he would move on. That was just the sort of man that Tenebrarum Ravus was.

Seymour wondered, as he half listened to his owner give some platitudes about Ravus returning to work, how he would possibly be able to warn Kuja not to come to the school again. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to. It was entirely a possibility that Kuja already knew. He had been praying for Ravus, and would have known when his services were no longer requested. Kuja was a busybody amongst the city’s elite, and Seymour wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to find that Kuja had been notified by Petronius Mateus himself that Ravus would be returning to his duties. Kuja was a clever man, far more clever than Seymour himself could ever hope to be, and so he simply had to trust that Kuja would stay away and out of trouble.

 

It was with these musings lingering in the back of his mind that led to Seymour being somewhat startled two days later. He had just finished his mid-day meal, and left the dining hall. It was getting too hot out now, with summer creeping in, to stay indoors overly long during the day. He had thought himself the first one out of the dining hall, and so was surprised to find two figures standing in the shadows near the edge of the courtyard.

One was Kuja, standing with his hands hanging loose at his sides, garbed in a cheerful and bright yellow tunic. His long hair was in a braid, cast over his right shoulder. His mouth was drawn in a tight, thin line as he looked at the other man. Standing just out of the reach of Kuja’s shadow was the lanista. He still looked just slightly better than completely awful, although his face had been shaved and hair groomed. His face was gaunt and pale, but Ravus’s expression was as stern as ever. 

The lanista’s voice was raspy when it reached Seymour’s ears. “You prayed for me. You asked for the gods to spare my life. You did this, even though you knew I disliked you.”

“I did,” was Kuja’s soft reply.

“Why?”

Seymour watched Kuja’s profile, the way his jaw clenched as he strained to maintain his composure. “Because, it is what was asked of me. Even though you do not like me, and I hold no admiration for you, there are still people in the world who do care for you. They asked for it.”

“I see.” Ravus’s pale brows furrowed for a moment, but then his expression relaxed. “Thank you.”

Kuja’s lips worked wordlessly for a moment, and then his shook his head. “I was just doing my job, sir.”

“As am I.” Ravus moved his hand from his hip to gesture at the main entrance to the school. “You are free to go.”

The younger man nodded and hurried off. Seymour watched him go, wishing that he had a moment to speak with Kuja, but also knowing that such a thing would be improper with Ravus still standing right there. 

For a long moment the lanista did not move. Then, he slowly turned his head until he was looking at Seymour. Kuja had been right, he thought as the mid-day sun glinted in the lanista’s eyes. The left eye was a little darker than the right.

“You are permitted to mind yourself until the next bell,” Ravus said. He turned away. “I would advise against doing anything to encourage that man to enter the school when I am here. He does not have further permission to do so, without the word of Lord Petronius.”

“And after hours, sir?”

The lanista squared his good shoulder. “I do not want to see the man here. Take that under advisory.”

Seymour watched the lanista stride off in the direction of the dining hall. He had pondered the man’s words for a moment before realizing that he had not heard the entry door open and close upon Kuja’s departure. Seymour made certain that the lanista had indeed gone inside the dining hall before hurrying around the side of the courtyard and to the entrance.

Kuja was there, lingering with his hand near the latch in case he needed to look like he was leaving in a hurry. The man’s pretty face lit up as he saw that it was Seymour who approached, and he hurried over.

“You’ll get in trouble if Ravus realizes you’re still here,” Seymour said, though he could not quite manage to keep a smile off his face.

“I don’t care. I wanted to see you.” Kuja grabbed at the front of Seymour’s tunic and tugged him down for a kiss. “I’ve missed you.”

“And I you.”

“I was afraid, when the courier brought the message that Ravus wanted to speak with me.” Kuja wrapped his arms around Seymour’s middle and rested his head on his chest.

“He doesn’t seem as cross with you as before,” Seymour said.

“Perhaps, perhaps not. I am reluctant to test that change.”

Seymour understood. Just because the lanista had not been going for Kuja’s throat did not mean that his past issues were forgotten or forgiven. He nodded.

Kuja kissed his lips again and then slowly pulled away. “There is a party I must attend tonight, but I promise I will try to see you in the next few days.”

“You don’t have to promise. Just try.”

 

Kuja left the school, feeling relieved that nothing particularly bad had happened to him while he was there. When the courier had arrived at first bell with the message to see Ravus at the school, Kuja was expecting--well, he honestly wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t anything good. To be dismissed by the man so quickly was almost a relief.

He was puzzled when he drew within sighting distance of his home. The entryway was crowded with men milling about. They looked to him like businessmen, shop owners--solicitors. That was strange, Kuja thought. These sort of men didn’t usually come around when the senator was not home. And from his last missive, the senator wouldn’t be back in Pompeii until--

“Now, now! I’ve scarcely had time enough to knock the dust off of my sandals. I’m afraid you all will have to come back tomorrow!”

Kuja felt his heart in his throat as he watched the gathered men grumble and disperse back into the city. First he saw Cid, brandishing a broom. Then, behind him, he saw the Senator.

“Master Ardyn!” Kuja darted to the door. He threw his arms around the tall man’s middle and hugged him tightly. The Senator smiled despite his lack of decorum.

“My, you’re quite excited to see me, now aren’t you, my pet?”

Kuja stepped away, his cheeks hot. “I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t think you would be back so soon. You said not until next month.”

He chuckled and patted at Kuja’s hair. “I know, but a few of my associates decided to come back early, so I caught a ride on their yacht. I hope you don’t mind the surprise.”

Kuja smiled. “No, sir, not at all.”

They went inside, Cid locking the door behind them.

“Everything looks good so far,” Caelius Ardyn said in his loud voice as he strode through the house. “And here you were acting like I was catching you unprepared.”

He blushed. “Well, you did. A little. I always try to keep things proper, sir. We never know when one of your family might come by and need to be properly taken care of.”

“That’s very dutiful of you, my dear.” Ardyn smiled and wagged a finger down at him. “Though, I thought I told you that when we’re in private you have my permission to just call me ‘Ardyn’.”

Kuja swallowed. “I know, sir, but I’m still not entirely used to it. Or comfortable with it.”

The Senator gave an over dramatic sigh and whirled away. “Suit yourself, then. I trust everything has been going well since your last letter, seeing as I have no received any more urgent correspondence from you.”

“The summer has been mostly uneventful, sir,” Kuja said. He followed the Senator as he made his way through the house, sticking his head into doorways and greeting anyone he came across. “More recently I’d been dealing with a matter for one of the magistrates, but I had not had time yet to write to you about it.”

“Oh?” Ardyn stooped to press his nose into one of the bright yellow flowers growing on a bush in the atrium. “Which magistrate? What sort of business?”

“My lord,” Cid called from the hall. “I do not mean to interrupt, but your things have been put away in your room.”

“Good, good. Have some water drawn up for me. I need to freshen up a bit.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ardyn looked back at Kuja. “Now then, my dear little statue, tell me about this business.” He did not wait for Kuja to begin speaking before starting off again, ambling toward his bedroom. Kuja followed him, trying not to laugh. The Senator always seemed to be switching between nearly immobile and completely restless.

Kuja perched on the edge of the Senator’s bed. He watched as the older man removed his belt and tossed it aside, and then tugged his travel-stained tunic up off over his head and tossed that away as well. While he scrubbed his fingers through messy pink hair, Kuja looked at the Senator’s body. His eyes went, as they always did when presented with an undressed Ardyn, to the man’s left side, to the scars there, marring the left side of his torso and snaking down below his undershorts to his hip. Old war wounds that the man did not like to talk about.

“Tell me, do I pass inspection?” the Senator asked in a playful tone. Kuja made a show of thinking noises.

“You look well enough, my lord,” Kuja said. “Your weight looks good, at least. Have you found a woman to feed you?”

“What? No, of course not. Not unless you count the woman working at the food counter down the street from my apartment.”

“I hate your apartment.” Kuja had only briefly ever seen Ardyn’s apartment in Rome, but remembered it being a small, dismal affair that was not befitting one of the Senator’s standing. While it was bigger than the room Tenebrarum Ravus lived in, Ardyn’s apartment still reminded Kuja of some sort of glorified prison cell. He could not fathom why the man would chose to live there while in Rome and not in his family’s lavish estate.

“I know you do,” Ardyn said lightly. “But, that isn’t anything for you to concern yourself with. Your concerns are here.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“Besides, you said it yourself: I look just fine.”

“You could still use a haircut and a shave.”

The Senator scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Nonsense.”

One of the household slaves arrived with a basin of water, a washrag, and a towel. They made to assist the Senator with cleaning up, but Ardyn shooed them away, grumbling that he could take care of himself. Kuja smiled. Time unsupervised in Rome had not changed the man.

“Oh, what are you smiling about?” Ardyn asked as he scrubbed off his legs and feet.

“Nothing in particular, my lord. I just missed you, that’s all.”

“Well, I missed having you around, too.” The Senator leaned to inspect his toes. “I know it’s what I’m good at, but politics in Rome can still be quite droll at times.”

“Surely you could find better entertainment than me.”

“Yes, but none perhaps quite so expensive.” He switched to the other foot. “Now then, you were saying something about Petronius Mateus? Has his wife had their child, yet?”

“No, sir, not yet. She still has a few more months.” Kuja shifted his weight back and tucked his legs up under him. “I do not envy her, in this heat.”

“Nor do I.” Ardyn made a thoughtful noise. “So, then, if it isn’t the Lady Petronius, then what have you been up to, my dear?”

“Well, you recall Servius Tenebrarum Ravus, yes? The current lanista at magistrate Petronius’s gladiator school.” Kuja continued after Ardyn gave a nod of acknowledgement. Of course Ardyn knew the man--they were nearly relatives. “Last month he took quite ill. There was some quiet concern that he was not going to recover.”

“Ill, you say? Was it the same illness that took his sister?”

“I can’t say that for certain. I do not know the conditions that she was in at the end. But Ravus did look quite bad.”

“You would say he always look bad,” the Senator said in a coy tone.

“Yes, and that’s his own fault. We could have gotten along just fine.” Kuja flicked his finger lightly at his knee. He watched the Senator wring out the rag and start to wipe at his arms. Kuja sighed. “Petronius Mateus asked me to go to Ravus’s apartment and sing for him. Rather, to pray for him, to the gods, to spare him.”

“You got paid, I hope.”

“Of course, sir. I don’t think I could have done such a thing for that man out of charity. I went daily and sang for him, and he… he eventually did get better.”

“Oh, good for you,” Ardyn said.

“I don’t know if my prayers had anything to do with it. After all, they were hardly sincere on my part. I think perhaps that the gods wish to try him. That they will keep knocking him down, to see if he can rise again from his suffering.”

The Senator smiled. “I don’t know. I rather like to think that you managed to heal the man out of spite.”

Kuja laughed. “I guess you could put it that way, too, Master.”


	10. Chapter 10

When Seymour’s first bout of the summer finally rolled around, he found himself presented with a touch of excitement, of anticipation that he had not felt in some time. True, there was always a bit of those feelings before a fight--after all, despite the endless hours of practice and training, there was always the possibility that something unexpected could happen during a bout. And while this had indeed happened to Seymour in the past, it had always been in his favor.

No, this time Seymour was a bit excited because he knew that Kuja would be in the audience, watching him fight. He did not want to disappoint the man with his performance. In addition to that, Seymour knew, from what Kuja had told him during their late evening meet-ups, that the Senator would also be in attendance today. The Senator was a big fan of gladiatorial matches, according to Kuja, so Seymour did not want to give that man a bad show, either. He knew it would be in his best interests to keep on the Senator’s good side as much as possible, even though he had not yet met him in person. He didn’t even really know what the man looked like, just that Kuja had described him as being ‘tall and a bit not what you would expect’. That could be almost anything, since Seymour really had no idea what to expect.

He chose, in order to calm his nerves, to focus on his upcoming fight. Seymour sat, eyes closed, listening to the cheers of the crowd as another pair fought before him. He murmured the words of the gladiator’s oath to himself. He focused on the things he could put his faith in: the strength and flexibility of his muscles, the sureness of his feet, and the cunning of his mind. These were the things he could maintain faith in, and these were the things that the gods had given him, guided him in, to lead him to victory.

“‘I will endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword’.”

The fight ended, and he and his competitor were called out onto the blood sands. Seymour scanned the crowd, but did not see Kuja. Still, he was certain the man was there, as he had promised he would be. 

The bout was nothing notable, just another clashing of shield and sword. It nearly came to a draw, but at the end Seymour was able to knock his opponent off balance and bring his sword to the man’s throat. The man was spared, and Seymour declared the winner. He raised his sword in the air, enjoying the cheer of the crowd as his combatant was led away. He half turned, scanning the crowd again. He thought he might’ve seen Kuja, but could not be sure.

Seymour was called off the field so the next fight could proceed. He was directed to where the medici was and sat on a bench. He exchanged pleasantries with the man he had just beaten while waiting his turn. The medici looked him over, patched up a few small cuts on his right bicep, and then sent him on his way.

The event guards pointed the way to where the victors’ banquet was being held. A few of the other gladiators were already here, and he sat with them and chatted for a while. They sipped wine and waited for the fights to be over and the festivities to begin. Eventually the noise out in the arena faded and men began to filter into the dining hall. They were well dressed men, the elites of the city as Seymour had seen times before. Men stopped to praise the gladiators, clapping hands on shoulders and giving kind words before moving on to the dining couches.

Once things had begun to settle down, a figure appeared. Seymour knew the figure, the man well now, knew the weight of his body pressed side to side, knew the softness of his skin and the playfulness of his lips. He was less well versed in the visual side of the man, and this evening he was breathtaking. Kuja was draped in fine green silk, something not quite a tunic, something more tantalizing and exotic. His silvery hair shimmered with a webbing of fine gold threads, and his arms and hands and throat were covered in an Empress’s ransom worth of sparkling gems. It would have been tacky on a lesser creature, but on Kuja it looked almost modest.

Kuja danced, his body twisting in beautiful and strange patterns. Even not so lavishly garbed he would have been impossible to look away from, but as he was he was completely mesmerizing. Seymour had not seen anyone, man or woman, who was quite so graceful on their feet. Seymour was not the only one taken with the dancer. The other gladiators and lingering members of the elite also watched with rapt, often openly lustful gazes. Seymour felt a strange twist in his gut that was nearly but not quite envy.

Kuja moved from couch to couch, twirling here and there, running the length of his silken shawl along one man’s arms, teasing the chin of another. Seymour could see his lips move here and there, whispering things into the ears of the city’s rich and powerful. He watched the men touch Kuja--touch his silk clad thigh, touch his smooth arm, try to steal a kiss from him. Kuja’s face was carefully posed, passive to the touches, yet still alluring with his eyelids half lowered. 

Finally, it seemed like forever, Kuja reached where Seymour was seated. He made a show of twining his shawl around Seymour’s hair, and then playfully perched on his right knee.

“Do you always do this?” Seymour whispered.

“It’s part of my job,” Kuja whispered back in a near hiss. He grabbed the back of Seymour’s head and pulled him closer, crushing their lips together. The other gladiators whooped and clapped their hands. When he pulled away he whispered again: “My master is here, he wants to meet you. He’s in the atrium. Come find us there.”

Seymour gave a minute nod and watched as Kuja danced away. His eyes stayed fixed to the beautiful man until he had departed from the area. Seymour busied himself with his food and wine, talking with a few of the other gladiators, listening to the compliments from the rich men. He waited until everyone’s attention waned, and then excused himself to relieve himself.

He made his way out to the atrium. There was a small gathering of men here, several of them in togas. Seymour recognized a few of the faces, but was relieved to find that his owner was not amongst them. What he did find was the glittering form of Kuja, draped on the arm of a man Seymour had not seen before. He was very tall, broad shouldered, with a lean body. Draped over this form was a bright white tunic flaunting the broad red stripes denoting a Senator. The man, despite his apparent status, had an unkempt look to him. There was a day or two’s worth of stubble on his face, and his hair was loose and disheveled as it fell to his shoulders. Pink hair, like rose petals stained with blood and wine, a peculiar color that Seymour could only recall having seen a few times before in his life. Seymour couldn’t judge on that, though, for his own hair was as blue as the Senator’s was pink.

When Seymour entered the atrium, the Senator was leaning on a column, right shoulder on the stone, left shoulder covered by his glittering companion. Kuja’s dark eyes flitted to Seymour, and then he leaned up and whispered something in the Senator’s ear. Something unreadable flickered across the Senator’s face, before he pushed away from the column and his mouth cracked into a wide smile.

“Hello there! Why, if it isn’t the most esteemed gladiator Seymour!” The Senator’s voice rang impossibly loud, especially since no one else in the gathering seemed to have noticed that the man had spoken. Perhaps they were just used to it, and ignoring him? The pink haired man threw his hands wide in a welcoming gesture as he ambled towards Seymour. There was a slight, barely noticeable limp in the man’s step, as though something maligned his left side. Barely visible, but Seymour had not survived numerous bouts as a gladiator without having been able to swiftly discern the weaknesses in his opponents.

And this Senator was definitely an opponent, Seymour could tell that right away. There was something overtly over the top and aggressive about the man that set Seymour ill at ease.

“Yes, sir, I am he,” Seymour said. The Senator clapped a long fingered hand on Seymour’s shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze.

“Excellent, excellent. My dear little songbird tells me about all the latest gossip in Pompeii, and he’s mentioned your arrival on the blood sands a few times.”

“Is that so?” Seymour shot a look just behind the Senator’s shoulder, where Kuja was lingering, looking up at him from under a half lidded gaze.

“It is indeed,” the man said. “I recall seeing you fight before, you know. Who can forget the time the Blue Death nearly cleaved a man’s arm off at the shoulder? Fantastic fight, that was!”

Seymour offered a congenial smile. “I’m glad you know of me, sir, but I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

“Oh, of course! How rude of me, this is our first time meeting in person.” He raised his right hand in a peculiar half-wave. “I’m Senator Lucius Caelius Ardyn, but you are more than welcome to just call me Ardyn if we are not meeting on business.”

“I’m honored, my lord.” Seymour looked at Kuja, whose pretty gaze had not drifted from him during the conversation. “I must compliment you, sir, you’ve certainly outdone yourself today in dressing up your dancer.”

“I am afraid I do not deserve any of that credit,” the Senator said with a polite scoff. “Kuja buys his pretty things with his own coin.”

“Not all of them,” Kuja murmured. Ardyn smiled at the other man.

“No, I suppose not all of them. I shan’t be held at fault if I cannot help but send him a lovely little trinket now and then, to make up for my absence.”

“And they are all appreciated, my lord.” Kuja smiled up at the Senator. A fond look was exchanged by the pair, and again Seymour felt that twinge of envy.

“Pardon my boldness in asking, sir, but if you value Kuja so greatly, why do you not keep him with you in Rome?”

“A fair question.” The Senator scratched at the stubble on his chin. “In truth, while I would appreciate Kuja’s charming company while I wile away the days in Rome, his talents are put to a far greater use here in a smaller city like Pompeii.”

“Why here, in Pompeii?”

“Why, it is the city I hail from, of course,” the Senator said. “I was born here, and I will likely die here. Unless I get a knife to the back in Rome.” He chuckled.

“I pray it doesn’t come to that, sir,” Seymour said politely.

“That’s very kind of you to say,” Ardyn said.

“Very kind,” came a soft echo from Kuja. Seymour looked between the Senator and his companion for a moment, and then cleared his throat.

“Well, I won’t keep you, sir. Enjoy your night.”

“You do the same, gladiator.”

Seymour could feel the Senator’s eyes on his back as he fled the scene. It sent a chill down his spine, and he shivered briefly despite the warmth of the evening. What a wretched man! No wonder he had become Senator, at what looked like a fairly young age. The man couldn’t yet be into his forties, but he had the skilled politically predatory look of someone twenty years his senior. Seymour felt as though if he were to face the man in combat, the Senator could likely cut him down with just the right look and a set of glibly chosen words. A skillfully intelligent man was far more worrisome an opponent than a brute with a sword.

He took a cup of wine and went outside into the peristyle gardens. It was quieter here, as most of the remaining partygoers were inside finishing their meals and conversations. Seymour sat on a stone bench with a sigh, and brought the wine to his lips. It did little to wash away the uneasy feeling that the Senator had wrought upon him, but he supposed that would fade with time.

Seymour, however, could not help but allow his thoughts to drift back to Kuja. There was no way a man like Senator Ardyn could possibly treat Kuja properly. The Senator had the look of a deviant about him, that was for certain, and poor Kuja probably bore the brunt of that deviance.

He had nearly drained his cup of watered down wine, when he noticed a figure loitering near the peristyle entrance. It was Kuja, glittering like a star in the light of the torches. The younger man was watching him. Seymour gave a little nod, and Kuja slowly made his way across the paving stones. He was barefoot again, Seymour noticed. An unpleasant choice for the villa’s rough flooring.

“Are you alright?” Kuja asked, voice soft. “You ran off after meeting the Senator.”

“Oh, I’m just fine,” Seymour said, puffing his chest out a bit. “Just needed a cup of wine, that’s all.”

Kuja smiled and sat next to Seymour on the bench. “I hope Master Ardyn didn’t frighten you. He can be a little intimidating.”

He scoffed. “He’s tall, certainly, but I’m not sure I would call him intimidating.”

“I see.” Kuja rested his hands on a silk covered knee.

“Does he keep you well?”

“Don’t I look well kept?” Kuja gestured with a jewel covered right hand before returning it to his knee.

“Yes, you look gorgeous,” Seymour said, and the other man smiled. “But, I meant more… is he kind to you? He seems a rough fellow.”

Kuja made a thoughtful noise. “The Senator is not without his… problems. But, no man is. I cannot say he is any worse than any previous owner I had.”

“Are you happy?”

Kuja’s brows rose. “For the most part, I am free in title only. I am still more or less bound to the Senator’s will. It is not my place to complain about whether or not I am happy. I am alive, and that is enough. You are a slave, Seymour, you know these things.”

“I know, I know.” And he did know that Kuja was right. Soon someone would come and round up Seymour and his fellow gladiators, and take them back to the school to be locked up for the night, like so many wayward cattle. “I just…” He sighed as Kuja’s right hand moved to touch his arm.

“I appreciate your concern, though,” Kuja said. “But, you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be okay.”

Maybe I want to be concerned about you, Seymour thought.

“So, this is what your work is, then? You go to parties and dinners all over Pompeii and do a pretty dance?”

“When I’m not called upon to perform more… intimate arts, yes.”

“But I can’t help but wonder...how well can the Senator think of you, if he just sends you off unguarded to other men’s homes?”

Kuja made a soft, thoughtful noise. “Well, I suppose that when I first came to Pompeii, that was a concern. But, as you well know, I have a fairly distinctive look to me. It did not take long for the men of the city to learn who I was. Most people quickly learned that I was not to be touched, that I belonged to Master Ardyn. Those who don’t were swiftly informed. Regardless, my presence was welcomed, and it helped maintain goodwill toward my Master when he was away in Rome. And that carried on after I was freed.”

“You enjoy just being prettied up and dancing around the city?”

“It is my lot in life.”

Seymour thought. He certainly knew a great deal about accepting one’s lot in life. He had been a slave for so long now that he did not really recall what freedom was like. After all, a child was not free, they were under the thumb of their father.

“Perhaps you need more wine, Seymour,” Kuja said. “You seem far too introspective for such a night.”

He sighed. “Perhaps I do.”


	11. Chapter 11

The summer went on like this, as the days stretched on longer and hotter and the nights too brief to be completely restful. Pompeii was busy during the summer, and Seymour was called to fight at least once a month, if not more. He was always victorious, and always well rewarded with a fine meal and a bit of coin. Despite being a slave, he was fortunately still permitted to keep his own purses. Seymour wanted to buy a gift for Kuja, but did not know what he could possibly buy for the man.

Kuja still snuck into the school late at night, though with Ravus remaining so late into the long day his visits were not as frequent as Seymour might have liked. If Ravus knew that Kuja was sneaking in, he had chosen not to say anything about the matter. For that, Seymour was grateful.

Still, as the summer flickered out and the fall began, Seymour found himself longing for more.

 

Kuja had to admit that sometimes he wished the summer months would never end. True, they were more taxing on him physically, but having the Senator around was such a pleasure that Kuja did not want it to end. Caelius Ardyn was loud and boisterous and endlessly entertaining. He had a thousand and one stories to tell of various intrigues from Rome, and was always equally eager to hear Kuja’s own stories. Kuja adored the man, loved him in the way he believed a man might love his father. He owed everything he had now to Lucius Caelius Ardyn.

Everything.

And so he danced during the summer solstice festivities, a bit of regret in his heart, because he knew it would not be long until Ardyn left to return to Rome. He always hated the departure, and was nagged by a lingering fear until he finally received word that the Senator had made the journey back safely.

Kuja spent as much time as he possibly could with Ardyn, even though he knew it was cutting in to his time spent sneaking into the gladiatorial school to see Seymour. He hoped that Seymour would understand. He had tried to explain to Seymour how he felt toward his former owner, that Ardyn was family to him, but he still was not certain that Seymour really grasped this.

The fall morning of Ardyn’s departure came far too quickly for Kuja’s liking. He followed the Senator down to the docks, stood by him as they watched his things be loaded onto the ferry. He hugged and kissed Ardyn good-bye, and then stood helpless as the Senator boarded the boat.

He watched the ferry until it disappeared on the horizon. He went back to the Senator’s home, quiet now, and sat on the front stoop. He pressed his forehead to his knees and wept.

Kuja had run out of tears, and remained in his pathetic pose for a long while.

The sound of sandals scuffing on the paving stones met his ears, drew closer, and then stopped. It was replaced by a heavy hand resting on his right shoulder.

“Hey, are you alright?”

Kuja righted himself and looked up in surprise. It was Seymour.

“What are you doing here?” He sniffled and wiped at his nose. “Shouldn’t you be training?”

“Petronius Mateus gave us the day off from training, in exchange for running grunt work errands for him.” Seymour shrugged his broad shoulders. “I thought I would detour over here and see if I could find you for a few minutes. And here I do, finding your eyes red with weeping.”

“‘I’m sorry,” Kuja said. “You shouldn’t see me like this.”

“It’s okay.” Seymour sat next to him. “Are you hurt?”

“Just in my heart.” He sniffled again. That sounded horribly dramatic, didn’t it? And to have Seymour find him here, mourning like some lovesick little boy! “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve no need to apologize.” Seymour wrapped his right arm around his shoulders. Kuja liked the touch. “Tell me what troubles you.”

“Master Ardyn left today for Rome.”

Seymour was quiet for a moment. Then: “Ah, I see. You pine for your lost love.”

“No. I just hate to see him go. He’s the only real kindness I have in the world, and I hate to be away from him.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I’m sorry if you don’t understand, if you mistake my feelings.”

“I don’t know how you feel, no. I barely remember my parents. I lost that feeling a long time ago.” Seymour gave him a squeeze. “But, I’m here now, with you, Kuja. And I think I can stray long enough to make you feel better.”

“Better?”

Seymour rested his left hand on Kuja’s knee. “Better.”

Kuja looked at the hand on his knee. Oh, he would have liked anything to be able to take Seymour up on that offer, but he just was not ready for that confrontation right now. He swallowed.

“You shouldn’t tarry too long,” Kuja said, trying to keep a chiding tone in his voice. “I don’t want to be the cause of Mateus or Ravus getting upset with you.”

Seymour sighed, his fingers squeezing lightly at Kuja’s knee. “If that’s what you insist upon, I must follow your wishes.”

“I’m sorry, Seymour.” He picked up the hand and held it between his own. “Surely you must know by now that I do care for you. And, not in the way I care for Ardyn. In that way that… that a man might usually care for a woman.”

For a long moment Seymour was silent. Kuja could feel the slight ripple of tension pass through his chest, pressed against his side.

Finally: “Really?”

“Yes, Seymour.”

The tension ebbed. “I’m flattered, Kuja.”

“And so I mean it when I say I’d like to do more with you. But, today is not the time.”

Seymour’s voice was soft. “Will there ever be a time?”

“I hope so,” Kuja said.

And he did.

 

Seymour did wish to spend more time with Kuja. If he could have his way, somehow, he would want to always be with Kuja. But that was not something he could decide for himself. He was subject to the whims of greater men. But he still wished, and he still lay in his bed late at night and prayed to whatever god might listen to the longings of a slave.

Summer faded, replaced by the shifting colors of fall. The number of bouts that Seymour was called to fight slowed to a near stop as the rich and the politicians went back to Rome. The gladiators kept training, of course, as there was nothing else for them to do. There was never any excuse for them to fall out of form.

In early October, a half dozen of the magistrate’s gladiators were rented to attend a party being held by one of the city’s more well-to-do residents. Petronius Mateus was quite inclined to do so, as the patron was in fact one of the younger brothers of the Senator Caelius Ardyn. The man, one Lucius Caelius Regis, was holding a gala in honor of his son, Noctis, joining the military. The young man would be departing in a few days, and his father wanted to give him a proper sending off, in case he never returned home again. It was a morbid thought, but such things did happen.

Seymour was lucky to be one of the six chosen to attend the gala. He wasn’t entirely clear on what his role was to be there. The lanista had said they were not to be fighting, but more just… standing around. But, not guards. Seymour supposed that Caelius Regis was just showing off, then, if he wanted to hire six gladiators to just stand around and look aesthetically pleasing.

He was permitted, per the agreement made between Petronius Mateus and Caelius Regis, to drink wine if it was offered to him. He was not, however, permitted to eat any of the food at the banquet. Seymour thought this a bit perplexing, but one of the other gladiators said that it was most likely because Caelius Regis had hired an expensive chef for the festivities and did not want the food to be wasted on some burly slaves.

So Seymour stood, leaning against a fluted column. He kept his arms crossed over his chest, muscles flexed just enough to look both appealing and intimidating. He was given some flirty looks by a few well dressed women, but everyone generally kept their distance. Seymour passed the time by people-watching. He kept an eye on what gladiators he could Sephiroth and Reno were busy flirting up a storm with a few widows on the other side of the courtyard. He watched other people mill about, trying to keep his general boredom off of his face.

“Can I get you some wine?”

He blinked and looked to his left. Kuja was standing there, looking lovely in a simple plain white tunic. Seymour could not help but smile at the sight of the man.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. Kuja laughed.

“I’m part of the family, now, I have to be here in Master Ardyn’s place.”

“I see.” Seymour gave a little nod and glanced around. “Having a good time?”

“Better now that I’ve found you,” Kuja said. He touched Seymour’s left bicep lightly. “I heard word that some of Mateus’s boys were here. I had hoped you’d be amongst them, but I’ve only just recently been able to escape the dining couches.”

“At least you got to eat.”

Kuja patted his arm lightly. “I’m sorry, dear. The Senator’s baby brother can be a bit of a stick about things.”

“It isn’t your fault,” he murmured. Kuja smiled up at him. After glancing at the other party-goers, he leaned in to whisper at Seymour’s ear.

“If you think you can sneak away from looking impressive for a few minutes, I’d love to be able spend a little time with you in private.”

He glanced down at the other man. “In private? Where?”

“Excuse yourself to pee or something,” Kuja said, his fingers playing with the edge of Seymour’s tunic. “Instead of going out to the toilets, take the stairs up to the second floor. At the end of the hall, over the shops, there are some guest rooms that haven’t been given out to anyone. I’ll meet you in the one at the end of the hall on the right.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?”

“As safe as anything else,” he said, tone coy.

Seymour swallowed, his mind darting anxiously between thoughts. He wanted to say yes, quite badly, but what if he was caught wandering off? Then again, it was not uncommon for gladiators to be used for things other than just looking impressive. Perhaps no one would mind, if he were not gone terribly long…

“Well?” Kuja said, his tone patient and a bit playful.

“Okay. Just for a few minutes. I don’t need to get into trouble.”

Kuja smirked up at him. “Don’t worry about that, my dear gladiator.”

 

He watched as Kuja slowly strolled away and out of sight around a corner. There was that excited, slightly nervous flutter in his throat again, once more brought on by that strange, beautiful man. He waited for a few minutes, and then left his post at the column. Seymour went through the motions of asking one of the slaves serving wine where to find the toilets, and then proceeded to ignore the directions and head upstairs.

A heavy curtain blocked off the entrance to the stairs, and as Seymour passed through the archway and let the curtain drop behind him, the noise of the party disappeared. It was much quieter now, almost eerie. He made his way up the stairs. The doors here were all closed and identical, and from what Kuja had told him he supposed they were all just rooms that guests could stay in. He followed Kuja instructions and made his way to the end of the hall. There was a window here, and a quick peek out of it showed Seymour a rather boring view of the street below. 

Looking at the two doors at the end of the hall, he wasn’t entirely certain which one Kuja meant when he said the one on the right. Was it his right when coming down the hall, or when standing with his back to the window? He tried one door--it was locked. The other door opened with a soft whisper of wood against wood. It was a plain room, with just a bed and washbasin and small storage chest. There was a lamp sitting lit on the chest. The room, despite its lighting, had no occupants.

“Oh, you got here before me.”

Seymour jerked in place and swore under his breath as he turned to face Kuja. “Honestly, wear shoes, you’re far too stealthy for me.”

Kuja smiled and pressed a hand to Seymour’s chest. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to startle you. I suppose I’ll have to start wearing nailed boots like the soldiers when I’m around you.”

Seymour huffed a soft laugh. “Maybe so.”

Kuja gave him a little push, and Seymour took a few steps into the small room. The other man followed, closed the door behind him, and set the little locking latch into place.

“I don’t want anyone bothering us,” Kuja said in a low murmur. “This is just us, just for a little while.”

Seymour saw something flicker across Kuja’s face. Was that fear? Now that the door was closed, Kuja seemed a bit off, a bit unsure.

“Are you okay?”

“Ah, yes.” Kuja gestured at the bed. “Please, sit.”

Seymour did as he was told. He watched as Kuja shifted his weight on his feet and toyed with the front of his tunic. He still looked uneasy, Seymour thought.

“It’s silly, isn’t it?” Kuja said to the floor. “I’ve been waiting months for this, for a chance to just have you to myself, and now I… I don’t know if I’m ready to tell you the truth.”

“The truth?” Now it was Seymour’s turn to feel uneasy. “The truth about what, Kuja?”

Kuja still picked at his tunic. “I don’t want you to hate me. I don’t want you to be repulsed by me.”

Seymour couldn’t imagine what could possibly make himself be repulsed by Kuja. He held out his hands.

“What is it, then? Please, Kuja. Tell me.” He gave a meager laugh. “What, are you only here on the Senator’s orders? Did he tell you to play around with some poor gladiator?”

“No!” Kuja moved closer and took Seymour’s hands. They shared a squeeze of palms against palms. “It’s not that, no.”

Seymour did not know what else to say to encourage him to speak, and so he remained silent, just looking up into Kuja’s suddenly sad blue eyes.

Kuja’s brows drew together, and he turned his face away to avert his gaze. “I was born in Persia, son of one of the slaves in the court of some rather unimportant princeling,” Kuja said. Seymour blinked at the sudden start to a story, but then nodded. “From a very young age, in fact probably by the time I could walk, I was greatly admired for my appearance. Not too many children were born with hair my color, not in Persia, at least. My mother used to say that she believed my father was one of the traders who came from the west and paid her master to have sex with her.”

“Silver hair is fairly common in Rome,” Seymour said in concession, uncertain what else to say. Kuja made a soft noise of agreement.

“Yes, that is true.” He cleared his throat. “And I was a pretty little thing, even so young, and so the men running the palace decided to… keep me a pretty little thing.”

Seymour felt like a bit of a dullard because he could not quite grasp the point that Kuja was trying to make with his story. He had heard most of this from the man before. He nodded again. Kuja turned his face back to him, and stared at him in the eyes. The gaze was intense, searching, and made Seymour slightly uncomfortable.

“I was gelded, like an unruly yearling,” Kuja said, slow and carefully enunciated. He did not break his gaze now, clearly waiting for Seymour’s reaction.

Gelded? That was what was done to male horses. They were castrated, their-- “You’re a eunuch?”

“I am.”

Seymour blinked a few times, trying to mask his surprise. He looked at Kuja’s lovely face, and then down at their hands, still pressing so intimately together. A eunuch! How had he not noticed before? Those long graceful limbs, the unusually feminine curves, and the beautiful face and voice. Kuja ticked off every random eunuch trait that Seymour could think of.

“Seymour?” There was worry in Kuja’s voice now, and he realized that he had not spoken for more than a minute.

He cleared his throat. “I must say, I’m surprised I did not think of it being a possibility earlier. You certainly fit the mould.”

Kuja licked his lips. “I am sorry if this is a deal breaker for you.” He sighed. “For others it’s just a window of opportunity.”

Seymour understood what Kuja meant. By Roman social code, a man with no balls was scarcely a man at all. Even if they were a freed slave like Kuja and given a proper Roman name, that man was incomplete and so never to be really considered to be a true Roman citizen. Kuja would always be on the fringes of society, all for something that was not his choice. It also explained why so many men were willing to pay to sleep with Kuja. There was no stigma there, no concern of a true man having to take on the female role in the partnership. That was Kuja’s burden.

Though, Kuja had turned quite a profit out of that burden, hadn’t he?

“We have to make the most of what life gives us,” Seymour said. Kuja nodded. “I understand now, why you’re always so evasive about some subjects.”

“And I understand if you want to call off our little… dalliance.”

Seymour rubbed his thumbs over Kuja’s. “I wish this could be more than just a dalliance.”

“Really?”

“Kuja, I don’t really care what you have going on under your tunic. I like you, I love you, because of who you are as a person, not as some hole to fuck.”

The other man’s cheeks turned pink. “You love me?”

“I do, yeah.”

“Oh, Seymour!” Kuja’s hands pulled away as he lurched forward, throwing his arms around Seymour and squeezing him tightly. His lips pressed against Seymour’s. “Say it again, please.”

“I love you, Kuja.”

“I love you too!” A little hiccup escaped Kuja’s pretty lips, and Seymour realized that he had started to cry. Nothing drastic, but there were a few tears streaking down the sides of his nose.

“Are you okay?”

“I am.” He pressed his face to Seymour’s shoulder. “I was so worried, you don’t even understand. I don’t want to lose what I have with you, Seymour, even if what we have is just a little flimsy thing.”

“I can understand that much.” Seymour could not suppress the twinge of pity he felt for the man in his arms. To have so much in life, but to still forever feel incomplete. No matter what Kuja did, he could never have back what was taken from him when he was a child. And to have that always silently defining who he was and how men greater than he would view him. He could pretend to know how Kuja felt, as now matter how hard he fought and however many battles he won, greater men would always just view him as a slave. But, that was not the same as what Kuja had suffered.

“I don't want you to think less of me. And I don't need pity, either.”

He nodded. “Then, what?” 

“I just need you.” Kuja feathered his long fingers over Seymour’s arms. “Just you. Your touch. Your companionship, when possible.”

“Of course.”

 

Kuja felt a little like he might faint. The relief of Seymour not recoiling at his secret was almost more than he could bear in his heart. He wanted to stay like this, secure in Seymour’s arms, for the rest of the evening. But, he knew he could not. And he knew he needed to make the most of what dwindling time they had together.

He pulled himself out of the gladiator’s warm arms. Seymour made a little low noise in his throat.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” Kuja smiled and touched the collar of Seymour's tunic. “Seymour, could I… could I see you? Without your tunic on, I mean.”

Seymour pursed his lips for a moment. “Ah, well. Yes, of course. As long as I can see all of you, too.”

“Me?” No one ever really wanted to see all of him nude. “Why?”

“Because, you’re beautiful,” Seymour said. “And I want to see you.”

They stood with their backs to each other and undressed. When Seymour gave word that he was ready, they turned and faced each other. Kuja hoped that he was not blushing all over as much as he felt like he was as Seymour’s eyes ran down his front. He distracted himself from his own embarrassment by looking at Seymour.

From shoulders to ankles, Seymour’s body was a well-muscled creation. His lanistas had done well in shaping him into a perfect fighting machine. He was not as massive and bulky as some of the gladiators, but Kuja did not mind. Seymour was gorgeous in his eyes, and Kuja wanted nothing more at that moment than to run his fingers down the gladiator’s chest, to feel his way over every little scar, every firm hill of muscle, and every tantalizing valley in between. Seymour’s cock looked like a healthy handful, and he wanted to touch that, too. 

“You’re beautiful,” Seymour said.

“I know it sounds trite, but I was going to say the same of you.” Kuja moved close again and touched his shoulders. “Sit, please. I want to touch you.”

The gladiator did not argue. He sat back on the bed, leaning against the wall and looking up curiously at Kuja.

He was not sure where to begin. He wanted to touch Seymour all over. Kuja settled, if it could be called such a thing, for straddling the gladiator’s thighs. Seymour’s hands immediately went to his hips, and the contact sent a spark up Kuja’s spine. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Seymour’s lips, before starting to kiss his way down the line of his jaw and neck. He ran his fingers down Seymour’s chest, through the fair dusting of dark blue hair and down over the lines of his abdominal muscles.

Seymour’s head tipped back and he let out a little hiss of breath when Kuja’s fingers reached his groin. His cock was already starting to get hard, the head just poking out of his foreskin. Kuja reached down and touched the head, smiling at the groan that escaped from Seymour’s lips.

“We don’t have time for much today,” Kuja said. “And, I didn’t have the forethought to bring any kind of oil.”

“Maybe next time,” Seymour said, his voice thick in his throat.

 

Then it was Seymour’s turn to touch Kuja. He had to admit, he was impressed by the smoothness of Kuja’s body. It was a strange, smooth beauty that Seymour had not seen in a man before. Even just their touching thighs were an interesting contrast between his own hairy ones and Kuja’s tanned, hairless legs. Kuja’s body was like a long curving line, and he had wide hips and lovely, thick thighs. His penis was small, almost an artist’s afterthought, and as he had said, there was no sign of his balls.

This did not bother Seymour as much as he might have thought it would.

“Do you ever, ah, can you still get hard?” He moved his hands from Kuja’s hips to rub down his thighs.

“I can, it just takes a lot of work,” Kuja said. His cheeks were dark pink, and there was a light blush running down his throat and chest. “No one bothers with it, though, so it’s… it’s been a long time.”

“Not tonight, then,” Seymour said. “I don’t want to rush your pleasure.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Kuja kissed him again. 

 

Seymour felt like he was walking on the clouds when he finally made his way downstairs. No one at the party paid him much more than a passing glance as he returned to the column where he had originally posted himself. Sephiroth was still seated on the stone floor between two benches, entertaining some housewives with a story. Seymour leaned against the column once more and crossed his arms over his chest.

His encounter with Kuja had proven to be both surprising and delightful. He certainly had not expected to learn what he had of Kuja. After all, who would ever guess such a thing? Looking back, sure, there were plenty of hints, but who would really want to suppose such a thing about a person?


	12. Chapter 12

There were times when Kuja missed being in Persia. This was mainly during the winter. He sometimes missed the cool, rainy winters of his homeland. While it never really got bitterly cold here in Campania, during the winter it could still get cold enough at night to make him wish he had some proper leg coverings. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if Kuja had someone he could cuddle with in bed at night, but no, this was not how Kuja’s luck went.

And if the cold wasn’t bad enough, the winter quickly became much worse for Kuja.

It was a public holiday. Kuja was not quite sure which one exactly, as there were many to be had in the Roman empire. But, it was one of the days that meant no one really had to work. Kuja knew that the lanista would not be at the school that day, and that the gladiators themselves would have a lighter workload than usual. Kuja was still by himself, as Ardyn was still in Rome with only a vague promise that he might travel back to Pompeii for Saturnalia, but that promise was just a thin thing like Kuja’s summer silks.

With things as they were, and with Kuja being both bored and lonely, he decided that today would be a good day to sneak into the gladiatorial school and visit his favorite gladiator. It would be nice, he thought as he made his way down the busy sidewalks, to spend the chilly afternoon with Seymour. He pulled his woolen wrap tighter around his shoulders, imagining what it would be like to be in the gladiator’s strong arms.

He got the first inkling that something was amiss when the front entrance to the school came into view. The street was quieter than normal, lacking the usual shouts that came from the school. The front doors were closed, as was normal, but there was a piece of parchment tacked to one of the doors. Kuja peered at the writing on it as he drew in closer.

FACILITY CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

Closed? This was news to Kuja. Why would the gladiator school be closed? He tried the handles on the front doors, but found that they were securely bolted from the inside. Undeterred, he made his way around to the side entrance. That door was also bolted shut. 

What was going on?

Kuja returned to the front of the building. He crossed the street, avoiding cold muck on the ground and horses on the stones, and knocked on a few of the doors of the businesses that faced the school. No one he spoke to knew anything about the school being closed. It had been open and occupied the evening before, and no one had noticed any departure from the school overnight.

There was, Kuja thought, only one place he could get a real answer.

He went to the home of Petronius Mateus. At first, the guard manning the door would not let him in, or even relay a message to the master of the home that Kuja wished to speak with him. The family was having a private party for the holiday and were not to be disturbed. With nothing else to do, Kuja sat on the stones next to the front door. He waited, ignoring the irritated looks from the guard, until finally a few people began to leave the household.

Kuja slipped inside and made his way to the dining room. As he had expected and hoped, the magistrate was still lounging on a couch. Aside from a few attending slaves, he was alone.

“You didn’t invite me to your party, Petronius, I’m hurt.”

Petronius Mateus glanced up from the cup in his hand. “It was a private affair, I’m afraid. There wasn’t room for you on the couches.”

“You’ll have to make it up to me later,” Kuja said. He was doing his best to play cool, but was certain that a keen man like Mateus could see right through his facade.

Mateus held out his cup, and a slave hurried over to refill it. “That isn’t why you’re here, though, is it? The party wasn’t publicly announced, so you had no way of knowing that you weren’t included.”

“That is true.” Kuja pulled his wrap more tightly around him. “I was out for a stroll and thought, since it was a holiday, that I would stop by the school and say hello to the gladiators. I was quite surprised when I got there and found the doors locked up tight.”

“Mm, yes.” The magistrate took a lazy sip of wine. “The gladiators have all been sent to Rome.”

“To Rome?” Kuja felt as though he had swallowed a bucket of the freezing bay water. “Did you sell them, sir?”

“No, not yet. I’m loaning the lot of them out to a friend for the winter in exchange for his family hosting my wife and child for the winter months.” Kuja was surprised by the faint note of sadness in the usually impassive man’s voice. “There are better doctors for them to be had in Rome.”

“I see.”

“Having the men out will give me some time to have the facility refurbished.” He sipped his wined. “Whether or not I sell it afterwards remains to be seen.”

“And, here I thought you enjoyed owning the gladiators.”

“I do. I’m just undecided right now.” His dark eyes flicked over to where Kuja stood. “Why the concern?”

“Oh, you know. I suppose I have just come to view some of the men as friends.”

The magistrate snorted lightly and raised the cup to his mouth. “Anyone can be your friend for the right price, isn’t that so?”

No, Kuja thought. You are not my friend, Petronius Mateus. You are just a man who pays for my time.

“I suppose so.” He forced out a smile, even though it made his face hurt and his heart ache. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, my lord. Was there anything else I could do for you today?”

“No,” Mateus said and waved his empty hand. “I have family matters to tend to. I’ll send someone to fetch you if I need you.”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

Gone to Rome. Seymour was gone to Rome for the winter. Sure, winter was only a few months, but, what if he never came back? What if Petronius Mateus decided to sell him off? Stuck here in Pompeii, Kuja might never see the man again. The thought alone was enough to deaden Kuja to the winter’s chill, and to any pleasure that he might find in the intervening months. 

Kuja even wrote a letter to the Senator, asking politely if he might join him in Rome for the winter this year. A few weeks later the reply came back, equally polite, with the Senator turning down the request but promising that he would be coming to Pompeii for a few weeks during the time of the Saturnalia celebrations. Kuja knew this should make him glad, and normally it would, but in truth he would have much rather braved the journey to Rome, just for the chance to possibly find Seymour there. He didn’t even know if he would have been able to--Rome was a large city, and Kuja had no idea who Petronius Mateus had loaned his gladiators out to. Kuja might spend the whole winter searching and not find him.

So he remained in Pompeii, waiting with anxiety and dread in his heart. He could not recall the winter ever being so very cold.

 

When the Senator did finally come back in December, he was quick to note the gloomy state of Kuja’s disposition.

“Whatever is the matter, my dear? My return usually makes you so happy.”

“Oh, I am happy, my lord.” Kuja was perched on the edge of the Senator’s bed, watching the older man rub a bit of oil onto the dry skin on his elbows. “Very happy.”

“You have the look of a widow about you,” Ardyn said, casting a look over his shoulder. “So, something must have happened.”

“Must you always be so observant, my lord?”

The senator chuckled. “It is part of my duty, and part of my trick to staying alive.”

Kuja sighed and picked at the edge of his tunic. “I am missing someone, Ardyn.”

“Oh? Someone more than me?”

“Well, you are here now, my lord. The person I am missing has gone far from me.”

“I am tempted to ask you who it is, but that really isn’t any of my business. I cannot force such secrets out of you.”

“You could,” Kuja said to his lap. 

“Perhaps, but I am not inclined to.” He reached over and patted Kuja on the hair. “Your heart is your own now, my dear.”

“I know. I suppose I am still getting used to that.”

Ardyn smiled. “Now, I know I am a poor substitute for whoever it is your are pining for, but you could at least humor me and pretend to be glad I am here.”

Kuja got up from the bed. “Oh, please, Ardyn, I am glad you’re here. Very glad. I missed you a great deal this fall.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. My behavior has been rude.”

“I forgive you,” Ardyn said with the same gentle smile.


	13. Chapter 13

By the time spring finally arrived, the Senator had long gone back to Rome. Kuja was left alone--relatively speaking, as the household was still full of people tending to it. Even as March began and the various celebrations for Mars were held, Kuja felt no pleasure in the slowly warming world. When the first boats began to arrive in the port, Kuja went to the school. But, the doors were always locked, entrance barred, the notice on the doors long ago ripped away by a mischievous winter wind. But still, Kuja went every day and checked.

The first day of April came, and with it the festival of the Veneralia. It was, from what Kuja understood of Roman religion and culture, dedicated to Venus Verticordia--Venus, the changer of hearts. Housewives prayed to the Verticordia aspect of Venus in order to help them remain faithful and chaste. Kuja didn’t have much interest in that part, but he knew Venus was the goddess of love and beauty, and so he decided that there would be no harm in asking her for help.

Kuja waited until the slaves were off busy with their chores, and Cid had wandered off down the street to get the day’s gossip. He went to the household shrine in the atrium and knelt on the tile before it. Kuja clasped his hands in his lap and looked up at the shrine. He had seen it countless times--the central painted figure of one of the Senator’s ancestors, hair black and eyes blue, flanked by two Lares holding libations, the whole scene watched over by the prosperity granting snake coiled around a pile of offerings. Ardyn had explained the meaning of all the images when he had first been brought here years before, but Kuja had not put a great deal of thought to it all.

He bowed his head and looked at his hands.

“Oh, Venus, hear my plea. I know you are quite busy today, and so I would be honored if you heard my words. I am but a simple man, his heart aching. There is a man I love, who I have not been able to see for many months. His will is not his own, and he cannot come to me on his own accord. And I am unable to leave this city to go find him. So, all I ask of you, great lady of love, is to please find a way to guide him back to Pompeii, so that I might see him again.”

Kuja sat in silence for several minutes after that. He didn’t know what he was waiting for. He did not expect a woman’s voice to ring out and tell him that his wish was granted--that was just something that occurred in stories told to children.

He was shaken from his musing by the return of the foreman from his trip to his favorite bar.

“Anything interesting today?” Kuja asked.

“Not much,” Cid said. He had a faint twinkle in his eye, the sort he that got when he had something worth telling.

“What is it?”

“So I was getting my afternoon cup, as usual, chatting with the owner’s lovely daughter, and guess who walks in to the place?”

Kuja sighed. “I have no idea, Cid. Tell me.”

The foreman grinned. “Tenebrarum Ravus. Seems he just got back in from wintering in Rome. Just last night, in fact.”

He stared at Cid for a moment. “The lanista is back? No one told me of this.” Ravus had gone to Rome with the gladiators. If he was back in Pompeii, then--

“Yeah, that’s right. Says he’s got the day off while things get settled back at the school.”

Kuja immediately turned and went to grab a shawl. “Thank you, Cid, you are a treasure!”

He heard the foreman mutter at his back as he hurried off: “Damn right I’m a treasure.”

 

Kuja did his level best not to flat out run from the Senator’s home to the front door of the gladiatorial school. He did not want to look like some desperate, possessed madman, even though he almost felt like one at that moment.

At the school, the front door was propped open. Men were heading in, carrying wooden crates and big, heavy amphorae. Kuja recognized the men--there was Rude, carrying two of the large earthen jugs as though they weighed nothing, Sephiroth toting a bundle of wooden training swords, and Ansem toting a massive, lumpy leather sack. Kuja stopped, hanging back, lower lip catching between his teeth as he surveyed the men.

He did not see Seymour.

He waited, watching the men enter the school, leave again to retrieve more items from somewhere out of sight down the side street. But still, no Seymour. Something awful clenched at Kuja’s stomach, and he fought back the urge to retch.

“Are you alright?” The voice that piped up behind him was smooth and familiar, a sound his ears had ached for and that for months he had only heard in his dreams.

Kuja turned quickly on his heel. “Seymour!”

The gladiator was standing there, and for a moment Kuja wondered if perhaps he were dreaming.

“No, I’m real,” Seymour said with a lazy smile. His left arm was in a sling, and he looked tired.

“I’m so glad you’re back.” Kuja moved to hug him, but stopped short. “What happened to your arm?”

“Fellow knocked my shield off me during a bout,” he said in a casual tone. “Nearly took half my arm with it. Do not fret, it’s nearly healed now.”

“That’s right!” Reno piped up behind Seymour. “This fucker still won with a broken arm!”

Seymour shook his head and watched as Reno ambled on, amphorae in tow. “It was close.”

“On the bright side, it got you out of unloading duty,” Rude said as he passed by.

“Yes, but I would trade the pain for hefting some boxes around.” Seymour returned his gaze to Kuja. “How did you know I was back?”

“I didn’t,” Kuja said. “But, my foreman said that he ran into Ravus at the bar he frequents. And so I figured, if Ravus was back, then the gladiators would be back. And that you would hopefully be back.”

“And if I hadn’t come back? Petronius Mateus did sell a few of us to a fellow in Rome.”

Kuja frowned. “I do not know. Perhaps I would have gone mad. Or perhaps I would have run away to Rome to find you. I wanted to all winter, did you know that? I even wrote to Ardyn and asked to be able to go to Rome for the winter, but he turned me down.”

“You flatter me,” Seymour said with a laugh.

“It’s true!”

“From you, I know it is.” The gladiator glanced around, and then leaned down. He pressed a soft kiss to Kuja’s lips. “I missed you, too, quite terribly. And I spent most of my free time wondering what you were doing, and wondering what I would do if I were not sent back to Pompeii in the new year.”

“It is perilous, to have the extent of your happiness held at the whim of someone else.”

“It is. But, that is just how things are.” Seymour turned to the school entrance. “Ravus will not be in today. You are welcome to sit with me for a bit.”

“I’d be glad to.”

 

Seymour had hated the long, cold winter. But, it was over now, and he was back in Pompeii. When he had first come to the city the year before, he had thought the only good thing about the place was the fresh air. Now, however, he had something else to look forward to seeing in Pompeii. Being back, being able to see Kuja again, to touch his sweet lips, was enough to make the weeks of pain from his broken arm and the months of worry about his future all almost worth it. Not a perfect trade, of course, as his arm still hurt even as he sat in the courtyard on the first fresh sharp growth of Spring and talked to Kuja.

He was still perfect, like an unchanging flower, and Seymour was glad that his months of missing Kuja had not inflated anything about the man’s beauty and sweetness in his memory. No, Kuja was radiant in his plain tunic and shaky smile and eyes shining with unshed tears.

He thought of Kuja’s words. ‘Perhaps I would have gone mad.’ Love was a sort of madness, wasn’t it? Capable of blinding a rational man to their usual train of thought, and making a slave wish of things beyond his station.

The other gladiators were giving them knowing looks, but left the pair alone. For that, Seymour was glad. He knew later they would poke and prod at him for information, but he would deal with that then. For now, he just wanted these precious minutes of Kuja’s company, to be able to forget the rest of the world, his own plight, and Kuja’s situation.

“Do you ever think of winning your wooden sword?” Kuja asked in his soft, low voice.

“To be honest, for a long time I never did. Never had a reason to. But now… maybe I have a little.”

“What would you do, if you won your freedom?”

Seymour smiled. “Sneak into your room when the Senator wasn’t looking and never leave.”

Kuja laughed. “I might like that.”

“And as for work, well… Successful gladiators are always popular, even after they stop fighting. I would probably be able to get work guarding some rich prick or their estate or something like that. Easy work, easy coin.”

“Certainly better than what I have to do,” Kuja said.

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. And yet, I do.” He shrugged his rounded shoulders and looked up at Seymour. He did not look sad about it, Seymour thought, and so he decided not to press that issue for the time being.

“There are certainly worse things you could be forced into doing,” Seymour said. “And you at least have that bit of freedom to just not feel like doing something once in awhile.”

“True. And Caelius Ardyn keeps me well. I cannot complain about him at all. He might be a politician, and a bit rough to other men, but he has never shown me anything but kindness.”

“You’ve never really told me how you met,” Seymour said. “Just that it was in Rome.”

“Ah, well.” Kuja rested his head on Seymour’s arm. “I suppose it’s always been a bit of a special, private thing to me.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to share the story with me.”

Kuja was quiet for a moment. Then he said: “You know about when I was a child. I told you that much, right?”

Seymour nodded. He had heard that part before, yes, though he had to admit that it must have been a fairly decent childhood, living in a palace, even if he was a castrated singing and dancing slave boy. “You started out in Persia.”

“That’s right.” Kuja folded his hands together on his left knee. “It wasn’t uncommon to have men from the west come to visit. Mostly merchants, rich men, things like that. Around nine or ten years ago, a retired general from Rome came to the palace. He was a lonely man. His children were all grown, and his wife had recently died. So he was travelling to take his mind off things. He had reached the end of his journey, more or less, by the time he reached where we lived.

The general spent a whole month at the palace. He was a polite guest, brought gifts and did not make peculiar demands, and so the prince and his fellows did not mind the man. When it came time for the general to leave and return to Rome, he requested permission to purchase a few of the multitude of lovely slaves that the prince owned to take back with him to Rome, for company. The prince, pleased with the visit, agreed. And I ended up being part of the lot that the general purchased.”

“Were you scared?”

Kuja shook his head ever so slightly. “No, not really. The general had never struck me as a cruel or dangerous person, just a lonely old man. I suppose the only thing that concerned me was leaving my home behind forever. I had never been very far from the palace in my whole life. I had never had any reason to leave. But I knew enough Greek and Latin to understand what was going on.”

“Your Latin is quite good, now,” Seymour said. “I wouldn’t have guessed it wasn’t your first language.”

Kuja laughed softly. “Thank you.”

“How old were you, then? When you left Persia?”

“Thirteen, I think. Maybe almost fourteen? By then I was already fully trained in singing and dancing and telling stories to entertain guests. And I had already had some experience in… other forms of entertainment.”

“How awful.”

“So is having your people killed and becoming a gladiator, I would imagine.”

Seymour could not argue with that.

“And so I was brought to Rome. What a place! I had never seen anything like it. Such an awful stink, so many people crammed into every nook and cranny. To a boy like me it was both wonderful and horrible at the same time. I was taken, along with the women, to the general’s home. It was a nice enough place, fairly large, though certainly no lavish palace. I got used to it, though.

There was not a great deal expected of me, in the general’s home. Most of the time I just sat around, looking lovely. The general, as I said, was a lonely man, and missed his old days of conquest. So he would have guests over for dinner almost every night. During the lulls in the parties I was expected to come in, dance and sing a bit to delight his guests, and then go back to my quarters. On most nights, one of the general’s guests would come to my room and make use of my body.” Kuja sighed softly. “I got used to it after a while, however unpleasant that part of the business was. The rest of the time I was left alone, so I couldn’t really complain too much. And if I did, who would care? The general wouldn’t--that was what he had bought me for. A delightful exotic little trinket to show off to the elite of Rome.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” Kuja was quiet for a moment. His fingers traced idly down the length of Seymour’s forearm. “This went on for a few years. And then one evening after a dinner party, a strange man came to my room. He was a little drunk and looked a mess, but he had on a senator’s tunic. He was very strange, especially compared to any other man who had come to my room in Rome.”

“What did he do?”

Kuja laughed softly. “He flopped down on my bed and just rested there. We talked a bit. He wasn’t interested in sex at all. He just seemed to be curious about me. He left after a while, but a few weeks later he showed up at another one of the general’s dinners. I remember, it was raining that evening, and I had been sitting on a bench and waiting to be called. And that strange man came wandering by again. He had apparently excused himself to go the bathroom, but really was just bored with the dinner. He… he called me a statue, because I was just sitting there being pretty and ornamental. He wasn’t wrong, of course, that’s all I was really was a lot of the time.

We sat in my room. And he was sweet to me. He kissed me, and asked me if I would like to go away from the general’s home. I didn’t really understand what he meant. He said he would buy me. He saw potential in me, somewhere, and said he could make better use of me than the old man. I remember, I laughed at him because I knew the general had paid a great deal of coin for me.”

“You do seem the rather expensive sort,” Seymour said, thinking of the times he had seen Kuja clad in fine silks and gems and gold.

“I didn’t think anything of it, but the Senator… he kept his word. A few weeks later, he bought me from the general, for a large amount of gold, the total of which he still refuses to divulge to me. It was a lot, though, I am quite certain. We did not stay in Rome very long. He brought me here, to Pompeii, and sort of put me in charge of his household. I was and am his representative here in Pompeii when he his in Rome serving his civic duty. And, as you know, I service as his eyes and ears and maintainer of good will while he is gone.”

“A big job for a simple slave.”

“It was. But, the Senator entrusted me with it, even though he barely knew me. I don’t know what he saw in me, but I do not mind now that he saw it. If anything, I am glad for it.”

“So am I.” Seymour considered the peculiar nature of Senator Ardyn. “Tell me, has the Senator really never tried to have sex with you? At all?” Considering how beautiful Kuja was, and how much the Senator had likely spent acquiring him, Seymour found this difficult to believe.

“No, he has not.” Kuja poked at Seymour’s forearm. “Little sweet kisses, certainly, but nothing more than that. I don’t think it’s a problem he has with me, though. I’ve never seen or heard of him being interested in anyone at all. He’s never been married or courted anyone. As he likes to say when people bring it up, he left that business to his younger brothers.”

“Strange, don’t you think?”

Kuja smiled up at him. “Yes, but that’s just how Ardyn is. And, to be honest, I would not want him any other way.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy with him the way he is.”

“I am. He has always been very kind to me. And then, one day a few years ago, he set me free, for absolutely no reason at all. Said it was a whim. I don’t know what it was. But, after that, he adopted me as his charge. And, well, you know all that.”

Seymour nodded. Kuja’s story, his history, while just as painful, was certainly more colorful than his own. In the distance, he heard a bell ring the evening hour. It was getting late.

“I should probably go home soon,” Kuja said. “I’d rather stay here, though.”

“You know you can’t do that.”

“I know, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to.” Kuja shifted his weight away and stretched his arms over his head. “Still, I should head back. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

Seymour got to his feet and offered his hands to the other man. Kuja took them, and Seymour helped him to his feet. Kuja blushed and laughed softly.

“You don’t have to treat me like some delicate flower, you know.”

Seymour smiled at him. “I know. But, maybe I want to.”

 

The next day the gladiator school returned to business as usual. The men had unpacked all their gear and supplies and settled back in to the newly refurbished building. Seymour had a touch of trouble sleeping due to the smell of the fresh paint, but nothing major. 

In the morning the lanista arrived with the second bell, looking as slightly irritated as ever. Seymour knew that, despite his expression, Ravus was glad to be back in Pompeii. For reasons that the gladiator did not fully understand, Ravus loathed the city of Rome and had spent a fair amount of time complaining about being there while the men had wintered in the city.

After lunch, during their brief break from training, Seymour found the lanista pacing in a slow circle in the shade by the courtyard. A thought pricked at his mind, and he approached the other man.

“Lord Ravus, might I ask you a question?”

The lanista looked at him. “You may.”

“Why it is that you hate Lucius Caelius Kuja? What repulses you about his being?”

Ravus said nothing, but Seymour thought he knew the answer. He had spent time during the winter pondering this question until he had come up with his own version of the answer.

“If I might suppose, is it because he is a eunuch?”

The lanista’s initial response was not so much a change in his expression, but in his utter lack of one. For a long moment Ravus was silent, his face a blank death mask. Then the man grimaced.

“A eunuch, yes. An incomplete being, never to be a whole man.”

And that, yes, was exactly it, wasn’t it? “He reminds you of your missing arm.”

“Do not suppose to know my thoughts, Seymour. I do not need some pretty dancer flaunting himself in my presence to be reminded of what I have lost. I am aware of that every moment of my day.”

“Then it is because you envy his ability to be happy despite what he lacks?”

Ravus’s jaw clenched, and he pointed out at the courtyard. “Laps. Now, until I tell you to stop or you drop dead. Whichever comes first.”

“Sir--”

“Unless you’d prefer to be whipped.”

Seymour sighed and shook his head. “No, sir.”

He felt Ravus’s gaze on his back as he ran. His stomach cramped from running too soon after eating, but he carried on. Seymour knew he had earned the punishment. It was not his place to question the lanista. Still, he felt better having done so.

Eventually, after the other men had finished their lunch break and were back in the courtyard training, the lanista called him over.

“You may stop running,” Ravus said. “Get back to training, and keep your fucking mouth shut.”

“Yes, sir.”


	14. Chapter 14

When summer arrived, it roared in hot and dry and miserable. Kuja now longed for the rainy days of spring, wishing for some reprieve from the daily, unrelenting heat. It was a strange time, this summer. He had been in Pompeii for several years now, and never experienced such a thing. It was almost like being back in Persia, but somehow worse. In the afternoons the ground seemed to groan and strain under the heat. The nights were not long enough for things to completely cool down.

Kuja kept the custom he had started in the spring. In the evening, when things had quieted down, he went to the school. He spent the span of one watch there, from one bell to the next, enjoying Seymour’s company. They would talk and kiss and touch each other, and make the best of their time. Then Kuja would go back home, and Seymour would go back to his bed. They would lay in the dark, alone, and think of each other.

He thought sometimes of running away, of stealing Seymour away and just running off somewhere where they could be together. He knew this would not work, of course. The pair of them were too visually striking to go unnoticed. This fact did nothing to stop his idle daydreams.

Kuja was called to the home of Petronius Mateus almost every afternoon. The man’s family was spending the summer in his father’s villa near Rome, leaving Mateus behind by himself. The summer heat was making him moodier than normal, and the only way to mitigate this was with a great deal of strong wine and Kuja’s bare thighs.

He did not mind it entirely. The pay was decent, at least.

 

By the time that the festival of Vulcanalia arrived in the month of August, Seymour was ready to be convinced that Vulcan did in fact exist, and that the god was working his forge somewhere out of sight and blasting the heat directly onto the bay of Naples. He dreaded being called to fight a bout at some rich man’s party, because even when he was well rested and ready to fight, the heat made combat more miserable than it already tended to be.

One good thing about Vulcanalia was that it was one of the public holidays that permitted the gladiators to not have to do much training and generally have the day off. Petronius Mateus did not let the men loose into the city, but he was generous enough to have some extra wine and food sent for the men to enjoy during their mid-day meal.

Seymour started out the afternoon sitting in the sun and feeling his brains bake through his skull. The other gladiators were busy with their own diversions--mostly throwing dice and seeing who could do more push-ups before collapsing. Seymour was not keen on any of that business. He was more than happy to just relax and enjoy the afternoon.

“Seymour.”

He managed not to groan outwardly as he squinted his eyes against the blazing afternoon sun. The lanista was towering over him, hand on his hip. Seymour huffed a soft sigh as he got to his feet and dusted off his tunic.

“Lord Ravus, sir.”

Ravus was squinting at him, looking as mildly perturbed as ever. Seymour always found it difficult to tell whether or not he had actually done something to irritate the man. It had the side benefit of keeping him on his toes.

“I am afraid you will not be able to enjoy your afternoon at leisure,” the lanista said. “Our Master wishes for you to go the home of Lucius Caelius Somnus. You have been hired to serve as a bodyguard for his daughter, as she wishes to attend the Vulcanalia celebrations this evening.”

“Me, sir?”

“The Master asked for you specifically.” Ravus squinted at him for a moment. “Do you know where the home of Caelius Somnus is?”

“Not specifically, no, sir.”

“I will give you directions. It is on the same street as the Master’s home. You should be able to find it.”

 

The home of Lucius Caelius Somnus was easy enough to find. Seymour had never been here before, and was only dimly aware of the man that owned the property. Caelius Somnus was one of the Senator’s two younger brothers, mostly just flourishing thanks to his father’s wealth. That was all Seymour knew, and truthfully he did not care to know more.

There was no guard at the door when Seymour arrived. That was curious, he thought. Before he could raise his hand to knock on the door, a gentle hand touched his arm.

“Don’t,” a soft voice said behind him. Seymour relaxed. He turned to face the speaker.

“Kuja, do you thrive on being sneaky?”

The young man had a silk shawl draped over his head and shoulders, but Seymour could still see the coy little smile that crept along his lips.

“Do the Senator’s brothers even have any daughters?”

Kuja laughed and shook his head. “Oh, no. All of their children were boys.” He hooked his graceful little hand in the bend of Seymour’s elbow. “It was just an excuse Petronius Mateus made up.”

“Mateus is in on your little schemes now?”

“This one. He did it as a favor, to thank me for… helping him, this summer.”

“Do you suppose Ravus knows there’s no daughter?”

Another chuckle from the other man. “Perhaps, but there isn’t much he can do about it. He can’t go against your Master’s orders.”

“Fine with me. And, the only curfew he gave me was to return to the school by the bell of the second watch.”

“That’s plenty of time.”

“Did you have something planned?”

“It’s a holiday, Seymour. We’re going to be festive.”

 

Kuja found that he greatly enjoyed the somewhat flummoxed look on Seymour’s face at their meeting. Not out of any malice, but more out of the pleasure of being able to surprise the man he loved and cared for. 

They went to the Forum. It was hot here, both from the thick throng of people and from the massive bonfire in the middle of the forum grounds. Kuja bought two small fish from a vendor. The fish were still alive as the grungy looking seaman scooped them out of a barrel and deposited them into a mesh sack. The fish flopped around. Kuja wondered if they knew of their impending demise. Did anyone, fish or man?

He pushed the morbid thought out of his mind as they joined the queue that led up to the bonfire. One by one, men and women and children of all ages and classes went before the fire and tossed in an offering. Some tossed in simpler things, bundles of flowers and satchels of grain. Others tossed in the more traditional fair of a small, living creature. Fish were the most popular. Kuja could not admit to fully understanding why this was being done--Ardyn had once told him it had something to do with offering up these things to prevent grain stores from burning in the summer heat--but he went along with it all the same.

When they reached the front of the line, Kuja opened the sack. He held it out to Seymour, who selected one of the fish. Kuja took the other. For a moment, he watched the fish’s mouth gape open, as though trying to plead for mercy.

They threw the fish into the fire. Kuja watched the little silver bodies flail for a moment. To his surprise, the fish flopped down the side of the bonfire and landed back on the stone at Seymour’s feet. The fish were still alive--burned and flailing in agony--but still alive.

A man with a hay fork quickly speared the fish and tossed them back to their fiery fate. Kuja and Seymour were motioned at to move along.

“The fish escaped,” Seymour said once the bonfire was at their backs. “Are they supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know,” Kuja said. “I would think it was just some instinct, to get out of the fire.”

“Is it an omen, you think?” Seymour made a thoughtful noise. “A good one or a bad one? It must be something.”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “I’m not entirely clear on the finer details of Roman religion. There might be someone in town we could ask.”

“Mm. It’s okay. It’s probably not that important.” Seymour shook his head. “In the end, a man and a fish are not all that different. We live, we reproduce, we die. Sometimes we just end up in the fire in the midst of all of that.”

“That sounded almost insightful.”

Seymour laughed. “Well, Master Mateus did give us an extra ration or two of wine today. Perhaps it’s just the heat and the wine talking.”

“Perhaps.” Wasn’t that the saying, though? ‘In vino veritas’--in the wine lies truth. “What else is the wine telling you, Seymour?”

“That I am happy,” Seymour said. “Because I am with you, and I love you.”

Kuja was glad it was hot out enough to make his cheeks already red. “Do you?”

“I do, Kuja.”

His mind flickered along urgently. Seymour had said his curfew wasn’t until the second watch. The last bell of the day had not yet rung. That gave them a fair amount of time to be together.

“Come back to my home with me, Seymour.” He took the gladiator’s big rough hand in his own, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. “Please.”

“Of course.”

 

Seymour felt, as they wove their way through the Vulcanalia crowds, that he had a sign on his back, telling people that he was misbehaving and should be stopped. He followed Kuja’s light footsteps, waiting for someone to notice him, to recognize him, to stop him and ask him what he was doing. To tell him he had no business to be enjoying himself, ask him why was he holding that man’s hand, and so on.

But, no one did. Everyone else in the city was too absorbed in their own happiness, their own festivities, to care what business a eunuch and a slave were getting up to. For once, Seymour’s business was his own, and it was a strangely exhilarating feeling.

Kuja unlocked the door to the home of Lucius Caelius Ardyn and let them in. The inside was dark and warm with the heat of the afternoon. Seymour could hear the laughter and chatter of slaves coming from the kitchen as they passed it, but Kuja did not stop there. He kept a firm grip on Seymour’s hand and led him to the other side of the house.

For a moment Seymour could not help but worry: “Your master isn’t here, is he?”

Kuja glanced at him over his shoulder. “Hm? No, he’s in Rome. He got called back early this year, unfortunately. I’m not entirely sure why, but Ardyn said it had something to do with the new emperor.”

“New emperor?” Seymour didn’t even remember who the old emperor had been. It wasn’t something he usually worried about.

“Yes. The emperor, Vespasian, died back in June. His son took over as the new emperor.” Kuja shook his head. “The Senator was called back to Rome about a month ago.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know--you didn’t say anything.”

Kuja looked up at him and smiled. “I didn’t want anything out of my control to mar our time together.”

That was considerate, Seymour thought. He would have admittedly had a harder time enjoying himself with Kuja’s company if he knew the man was quietly missing the Senator’s presence. 

They reached Kuja’s room. The door was quickly unlatched and pushed open, and Seymour was tugged inside. The room smelled like Kuja, Seymour thought as the other man lit a lamp. It was strange, he wasn’t sure how it smelled like Kuja, he just knew that it did. Kuja did not smell like the other men that Seymour was usually around--he was not a big, sweaty, muscled gladiator. He was a strange, exotic flower that teased its petals at other men but only truly bloomed for Seymour.

“I’m so glad we have this time together,” he said. “Private. Just us.”

Kuja smiled and touched his chin. His skin was soft, and Seymour couldn’t help but imagine that his rough skin and stubble might be enough to tear the other man’s delicate skin as though it were a fine piece of silk. But, no, Kuja was stronger than that, wasn’t he? Seymour knew now what troubles Kuja had faced. And though it was no battle on the blood sands, Kuja had spent just as much of his life fighting as Seymour had. And Kuja had won his own sort of wooden sword, in the form of the fondness of a peculiar politician.

“Come, then,” Kuja whispered. “Let us be together. Just us.”

 

Afterwards, they lay pressed together on Kuja’s bed. He rested his ear on Seymour’s strong chest, listening to the steady, vibrant pounding of the man’s heart beneath his skin. He closed his eyes and imagined that his own heartbeat might match with the gladiator’s. Perhaps it would.

“Sometimes, I like to imagine things,” he said after a few minutes of quiet. Seymour made a noise to indicate that he was listening, but did not speak. His heavy hand rested on the small of Kuja’s back, and his thumb traced a lazy arc back and forth along his skin.

“I like to think that I could buy you for myself. I know it would take a lot of convincing for Petronius Mateus to give you up, of course, but the idea still catches my fancy. He’s a spoiled man, but not completely rotten to the core.”

“You think so?”

“I do. I’ve known him a few years now. He reminds me of the Senator in some ways. He is rough and somewhat cruel to those he thinks below him, to those he does not like, to those who have wronged him. But he can be surprisingly kind to those that are on his good side. It is a strange quality to find in a politician--that ruthlessness coupled with a softer backing.”

“Some in politics would call that weakness.”

Kuja knew that he was right. “True, but in a way they are careful to never expose that weak point to those who might use it against them.”

“They exposed it to you.” Seymour’s thumb tickled along his skin again. “And you have admitted to using the important men of the city to your advantage.”

Seymour really was more clever than men might give him credit for, Kuja thought. “You are not wrong. But, just as much as I do use them, I could have been much more devious and cutthroat about it all. I suppose I just do not have the constitution for such things.” He thought of the Senator, ever generous to him. “Or perhaps I just do not want to hurt the Senator.”

“A strange loyalty.”

“One earned.” He shifted his weight slightly, opening his eyes and tilting his head back to look up at the other man. “But, yes, Petronius Mateus did expose that vulnerability to me even back when I was a slave. I guess I offered him a safe harbor for his thoughts--I am no proper man, no politician, and not his family or wife, either.”

“It’s because you’re beautiful.”

Kuja coughed a little laugh. He would have liked to think there was something deeper than that, but he knew Seymour was fairly accurate in his assessment. Men were simple creatures, after all, and Kuja knew that he would not have gotten to where he was now in his life if he were not appealing to the eyes and ears of men.

“You aren’t necessarily wrong in saying that, Seymour. But, I would hope there was more to it.”

“There is for me, and so I suppose that in time that has become the case for other men as well.” Seymour’s voice rumbled in his chest and against Kuja’s skin. It was a pleasant sensation. “Yes, I was first drawn to you because of your beauty. But you are more than just a beautiful statue.”

“Thank you, Seymour.”

“You don’t have to thank me. I am just being honest.”

“All the same.” Kuja’s mind drifted through his thoughts. “I don’t know if Mateus would sell you to me. You are a very successful gladiator, and probably worth more than I could ever hope to afford. Perhaps as much as I was worth to the Senator years ago. I could ask, I suppose. Save up coin from my ventures. Make you mine one day.”

“And what would you do, if you had me?”

Kuja smiled and pressed a kiss to the sweat-salted skin of Seymour’s chest. “Keep you with me forever, of course.”


	15. Chapter 15

The morning after Vulcanalia dawned hot and dry as any other day that month. Kuja was slow to wake, feeling heavy and content after the night before. He had enjoyed his little evening get together with Seymour. It had been a pity the man could not stay the night with him, but that was just how things were in their lives. Perhaps not forever, he thought.

He washed his face and had his hair rebraided before taking breakfast out on the porch. The morning was sweltering, and even as his took his first sip of wine he could feel a tickle of sweat on his back. The air felt strangely tight around him, almost difficult to breathe, as though the very ether was ready to crack into pieces in protest of the summer. A little wind, Kuja thought. A little wind, a little rain was all they needed for things to calm back down, to go back to normal. But there had not been rain in weeks. The foreman’s morning report spoke of wells in the area drying up, the possibility of water being rationed at the city fountains, grapes beginning to wither on their vines, and so on.

It was bleak, Kuja thought, but it would not be forever. Nothing was forever, not even the heat of the summer. It would eventually break, the rain would return, fall could come sliding in again as it always did. And, by winter, they would be complaining about the cold and missing the warmth of summer. That was how it always was.

Kuja pondered what he should do with his day. Since it was the day after a holiday, he knew that most of his usual contacts would be busy catching up on business affairs and not be interested in other sorts of affairs.

He decided that today was as good as any other to write a letter to the Senator. He went into Caelius Ardyn’s office and retrieved one of the bronze ink pens and the pot of ink to go with it. Kuja carefully cut off a length of papyrus from the roll sitting on the desk--that was getting a bit light, he would have to include a request for another roll in his letter. Then he took his tools and the flat of wood he used as a lap desk and went back out onto the porch.

Kuja looked out at the view below him before writing. The city was busy as ever, and Kuja could hear the mid-day bell ringing. He really did need to get out of his habit of waking up so late in the morning, especially during the summer when the cooler morning hours were the best time to get anything productive done. Kuja considered the distant hillside, its usual vibrant greenery stained a sickly yellow by the drought and heat. He sighed and turned his attention to the papyrus in his lap. He readied his pen, and carefully began to write.

‘To my dearest Senator Ardyn. Today is the 24th of August. Yesterday was Vulcanalia. I hope you were able to enjoy the festivities without getting into too much trouble. I was able to convince Petronius Mateus to loan me one of his gladiators yesterday to act as escort to the festivities. I threw a fish onto the bonfire in the forum. It was a lovely time. All the same, you are lucky to be in Rome and not here in Pompeii. It is so hot here, and it has been so long since we last saw rain, that I am certain without the aqueduct we would by now certainly have all dried up like so many dates on their mats. I can only--’

Kuja stopped, pen nib just above the tip of the papyrus. From somewhere in the distance there was audible a low, rumbling sound. Was it thunder? Looking up at the sky, he did not think so. There was a faint haze in the sky now, but no sign of any real clouds that might produce such a noise. The rumble repeated, a bit louder now, and Kuja felt the faintest vibration pass through his skin where it was touching the bench he sat upon. That, Kuja thought, was more likely an earthquake. They were not unheard of in the area, and though usually not very destructive there had been a big one nearly two decades before that had destroyed parts of the city.

The rumble stopped. Kuja waited, trying to suss out if anything else was going to happen. He coughed and exhaled, not realizing he had been holding his breath. Whatever it was had seemed to have passed. The sky was quiet overhead and the earth quiet below him.

Kuja dipped his pen back into the inkpot, tapped the excess off, and returned to writing.

‘--hope for reprieve soon. If--’

The rumble came back, sudden and sharp and loud. The floor beneath his feet quivered as though afraid of what was happening. The vibration was enough to send the ink pot rattling off the surface of the bench and crashing to the ground, decorating the tile with a mess of black ink and red ceramic shards. The noise of the city around him faltered and failed, and was replaced by the sounds of breaking pottery and cries of alarm.

There was a brief pause in the vibration, and then the whole world jolted. Kuja was thrown off the bench. He was barely able to catch himself as everything jolted a second time.

From somewhere far in the distance came a deep boom. It was followed by more rumbles from the sky, like the sound of thunder mixed with the roar of the surf. The vibrations below tapered off now, though despite the cessation of the violent bucking there did remain a faint, constant quiver in everything he touched. Was the world shaking, or was it him?

His mind strayed from this question as pain twinged sharply in his left leg. Kuja pulled himself up to his feet. There were scuffs on his palms from where he had landed on the tile. Looking down, the bottom of his tunic was stained black from the spilled ink. His left side had landed in the mess when he had fallen, and his knee and calf were stained with ink and streaks of blood where shards of pottery had dug themselves into Kuja’s skin.

He cursed and muttered under his breath. Kuja limped inside to find assistance, his letter to the Senator left on the porch, abandoned for another time.

 

Elsewhere in Pompeii, Seymour and the other gladiators had been in the middle of eating their mid-day meal when the strange noises began. They had to keep a grip on their bowls and plates as the wooden tables suddenly seemed quite determined to throw their stations off. Some of the men muttered about earthquakes. When the world lurched beneath them and the sky boomed overhead, the gladiators decided to go outside into the courtyard and wait things out. There was less likelihood of something falling on their heads if they were outside.

They sat out in the grass and finished their meal. It was not a pleasant, relaxing experience. There remained a persisting growling coming from the sky. A slight breeze had stirred, but it did nothing to dissipate the heat, and instead brought with it a peculiar burning smell that the men could not place the origin of. High, high overhead a gray cloud began to creep into view. The sound of shouting drifted to their ears from out in the streets.

Curious, Seymour and a few of the other gladiators left the courtyard and went to the front entrance of the school. They nearly ran into the lanista, who was standing with his back to the door, hand on his hip as he looked up above the rooftops. They looked up, too.

Out here, they could see what was causing a commotion, but Seymour could not exactly explain what it was they were seeing. Off to the northwest, only a few miles distant, stood Vesuvius. It was always there, always looming, but since it was always there it was easy to block out from one’s mind. Now, something had happened to Vesuvius. Something had broken open the peak of the mountain, and a great cloud, black and gray and brown, was twisting and writhing its way up into the sky. Up very high, so high that Seymour imagined that even the gods might be able to see it from their perches. That faint breeze the men had felt was causing the top of the strange cloud to spread out like a parasol.

And it was spreading in the direction of Pompeii.

“Sir? Hey, Lord Ravus, sir, what’s going on?” Reno fidgeted in place, his gaze shifting between the lanista and the brewing storm.

This seemed to snap Ravus out of his thoughts. He lowered his gaze and turned to face the men.

“What are you all doing out here? I didn’t give you permission to leave, go back inside.”

“But, that cloud--”

“It’s just a storm,” Ravus snapped at them. “Back inside. Now.”

The gladiators reluctantly shuffled back into the school and rejoined their comrades in the courtyard. Reno ran over to Rude and Sephiroth, and Seymour could see his hands flapping over his head as he told them about what had been seen. But, what exactly _had_ they seen? Seymour could not quite say for certain. It was unlike anything he had witnessed before.

He picked up his training sword and went to one of the dummies. As he went through the motions, trying not to look up at the slowly darkening sky, Seymour thought back to the night previous. The bonfire, a mass of logs all leaning together to meet at a point. Shaped like a mountain, he thought. Was that it? Was the mountain on fire? That seemed possibly, considering the strange cloud coming up from the peak of Vesuvius. Perhaps it was not a storm, but rather smoke, that billowed high into the heavens. That would make some amount of sense, considering how dry out it was. Perhaps one of the orchards or vineyards on the far side of the mountain had caught on fire.

The lanista went out to see if he could get some word about what was going on. Not for his own peace of mind, he said, but for the gladiators.

“Once we know what is going on, you’ll be able to train without acting like a bunch of simpering children,” he had said before departing.

While Ravus was gone the strange cloud overhead continued to darken. And then, fine, faint particles began to slowly drift down out of the sky and onto the gladiators. For a moment Seymour thought it might be some bizarre kind of snowfall, but no, it did not melt. Upon closer inspection it looked like ash. But it did not carry with it the smell of wood burning. It smelled almost more like the ground itself during this summer, hot and dry.

The gladiators stopped their training and puzzled over the falling ash. Seymour let some of the gray and white material collect in his palm. He rubbed it between his fingers. It was a strange kind of ash--it did not crumble apart at contact, but instead felt more like the surface of a piece of sandstone. Mixed in with the fine pieces were larger ones, like warm grains of sand and flecks of stone. 

It was at this point that Seymour started to find the air difficult to breathe. He coughed and retreated back to the covered walkway that surrounded the courtyard. The other gladiators followed, knocking the strange ash off of their tunics and hair. A few more coughs cleared things up, but he found the steadily falling ash now to be more sinister than before.

The only one who was remaining completely calm among the group was Ansem. The bestiarius was staring stoically out at the falling gray sky. Seymour walked up and stood next to him.

“Are you alright?”

“I am,” Ansem said in his low, rumbling voice. “However, this troubles me some.”

“Why is that?”

Ansem looked at him. “Have you heard of Etna?”

“I don’t think so…” The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he could not place it. “Is it a town somewhere?”

“It is a mountain,” Ansem said. He looked to the sky again. “A mountain that breathes fire. It is said that Vulcan works his forge there, below the mountain. I lived near Etna once, years ago, and on days when it was active, it spewed clouds of ash and rock into the air. Just like this.”

Seymour frowned. “Do you think it will be dangerous?”

“It could be, if it does not stop.”

 

As the afternoon dragged on, the rumbling from the sky persisted. It was starting to wear on Kuja’s nerves. He was tired of listening to the sky growl and spit ash upon them. It also did nothing to take Kuja’s mind off of the pain in his left leg and the lingering stinging in his palms. Cid had helped him extract the pottery shards from his skin, and he had washed the area off as clean as he could manage and wrapped it in a length of linen from the supply closet. But this did not dull the irritation and pain. The area was tingling and hot and Kuja found it difficult to walk quickly as he could not bend his knee completely without a fresh spasm of pain.

So, he sat in the triclinium, leg stretched out at an awkward but less painful angle, and watched the storm. The pale ash had grown into a solid layer on the porch, masking the spilled ink and the broken pottery and the spots of his blood. The papyrus he had been writing on was out of sight now. The falling ash too had grown thicker, a slightly darker shade of gray, with bits of rock mixed in. He could hear the soft plips as the rocks hit the layer of ash. It sounded like heavy raindrops. 

Kuja wondered how long the storm was going to last. No, it was raining rocks and not water, but what if it kept going on like this? Would they all be buried alive by the mountain? It was a chilling thought. 

The finer particles in the air started to make Kuja’s nose itch. So he had a slave retrieve one of his silk shawls and worked it into a wrap that covered his nose and mouth. The perfumed fabric smelled better than the falling rocks, anyways.

He lost track of the time passing. No one was ringing the hourly bells now. The sky was unnaturally dark with the storm. He lost himself for awhile in a mental haze. He wished he were back in Persia, where he could have gotten some opium to help with his pain. Or, he at least wished he had some willow bark on hand, but there was none in the household.

His daydreaming was interrupted by a loud crack out on the porch. A chunk of rock the size of a man’s fist had plummeted from above, striking the bench he had been seated at earlier. The wood had been splintered by the impact. Kuja got up and inched his way out to the porch. He made a quick grab for the rock and then darted back inside. Leaning against the triclinium wall, he examined the rock. It was nearly hot to the touch, baked warmer than the summer’s heat by some distant unseen fire. The rock was dark gray and black in streaks.

“What ya got there, kid?”

Kuja looked at the foreman and held out the rock. “It fell from the sky.”

Cid took it, turning it over and frowning. “Yeah, they’re starting to fall out in the garden as well. Stones the size of chicken eggs. Making a damned mess, I’ll tell you that much.”

“It can be cleaned up later.”

The foreman made an agreeing noise and set the rock down on the nearest dining table. “How’s your leg?”

“Still sore, of course. When this is over we’ll have to call a medic to come look at it--I don’t need it healing poorly.”

“Now now, I’m sure you’ll still be able to spread your legs for the rich fucks even if your knee is messed up.”

“Shut up, Cid.”

 

It soon began to grow dark out. Kuja knew it could not be that late in the day, but already twilight was descending upon the city. Kuja retreated to his room. He rested on his bed, thoughts going to the night before. He wondered if Seymour was alright. He had no way of knowing, and he was not stupid enough to send a courier out into this weather just to find out. He would have to wait for the storm to pass.

He wished he could fall asleep, so that when he woke up this would be over and life could go on as normal. But, he could not sleep. The ongoing rattle and crack of stones on the roof would not permit such respite. He was forced to lie there, awake in the dark, listening to the storm toss rocks against his roof.

Kuja had just started to doze off when a loud crash forced him back into wakefulness. He sat up, fumbling around in the dark, until he was finally able to find a lamp and get it lit. He limped out of his room. There were a few slaves milling around, looking nervous. One stood at the edge of the peristyle gardens and fruitlessly attempted to sweep the ash away. Kuja stopped and looked into the peristyle. The plants were all ruined, battered to pieces by the relentless onslaught from the sky. The collection of ash and stone was as thick as a snowdrift now, easily up to his knee in depth.

“What was that noise?” Kuja asked the woman with the broom.

“The house next door.” She shook her head and pointed off to the north. “I think part of the roof collapsed from all of the stones.”

Kuja frowned. What if that happened here? He did not know what to do. He had no sort of emergency plans that involved the sky falling down on their heads. He both wished that Ardyn was there to help, but was also glad that he was far, far from here and safe in Rome. Kuja wished he were safe in Rome, too.

But, that was not how things were going.

“Where is Cid? Where is the foreman?”

She gestured down the hall with her broom. “In the kitchen, sir.”

He made his way slowly down the hall, being careful not to slip on the layer of stones and ash that was coating the paving stones. He found the foreman as described, seated on a stool in the kitchen and drinking a mug of wine. Cid was turning a pale gray rock in the fingers of his free hand.

“You see this shit?” Cid held up the rock for a moment. “It’s pumice. Weird rock, it’s like sea foam that turned into stone or something. Full of holes.” He took a gulp from his mug. “They grind this stuff up and mix it with lime and turn it into concrete. You know what concrete is, right?”

“Vaguely. It’s a building material?”

“It’s like magic,” Cid said. “Will set hard as stone, even when it’s poured underwater. They used it in making all the fancy docks you see here in Pompeii and elsewhere in the empire.”

“I see.” Kuja did not really know why Cid was bothering to tell him all of this.

The foreman tossed the rock into the air. It landed softly in his palm. “The thing is, out in the wild you usually only find this stuff in places where the earth has cracked open and breathed fire. Places like Stromboli or Vulcano or Etna.”

“Do you think that’s what is happening here? Is the mountain breaking open?”

“I don’t know,” the foreman said. “Never had anything like this happen here before. Never heard any stories of it, either. And you’d think that would be something people would remember.”

“Indeed.” Kuja looked up at the ceiling. He listened to the sound of stones hitting the roof tiles, and felt ill at ease.

 

“You know what sucks?” Reno said as the men ate their evening meal.

“What’s that, Red?”

“When this storm passes, we’re the people who are going to have to move all that damn stone out of the training area. Like it’s our fault or something!”

The other men laughed, but Seymour just smiled and shook his head. He wondered if it would be safe to stay at the school much longer. He knew the thought was on the minds of the other gladiators as well. Throughout the afternoon the stone and ash had continued to fall and accumulate. They had heard the sounds of roofs giving way in the buildings near them. A few of the men had climbed up onto the roof and attempted to knock some of the stones down and out onto the street, but that had only been mildly successful. And, the storm had not stopped and not shown any signs of relenting any time soon. Seymour worried that, before long, they would be trapped in the school, surrounded by stone on all sides.

They had asked Ravus what they should do, but the lanista was not talking. He had barely said a word since venturing out earlier to find out what was going on. Now he just stood out under the walkway overhang, holding a scrap of linen over his mouth and nose, dark eyes staring out at the storm. He had declined their offer of dinner, and had made no motion to leave for the night and go back to his little apartment.

Seymour finished his meal. He filled a mug of wine and went outside to where Ravus stood alone in the dark. He watched the light from a wall lamp flicker on the lanista’s face before approaching him, but Ravus’s expression was blank. For a moment, as he approached, Seymour wasn’t even sure the man wasn’t sleeping with his eyes open. He cleared his throat, and the lanista’s eyes shifted slightly in his direction. Seymour noticed a small purpling spot over his left eye. A piece of falling rock must have hit him while he was out earlier.

“Sir, are you sure that you are well? Did something happen earlier?” He held the mug out. Ravus narrowed his eyes at him for a moment. Then he tucked the piece of linen into his belt and took the mug.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice more gravelly than normal. He took a long gulp from the mug and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “I am physically no worse for wear.”

“The men are concerned.”

“For me? I doubt that.” He took another gulp. “All the same, worrying will not save us now.”

“Sir?”

“We are under siege, Seymour.” He gestured at the courtyard, barely visible in the dark. “The gods are dropping a mountain on us, piece by piece, and we will all be dead by morning.”

Seymour frowned. He did not know Ravus to be a pessimistic man. Which meant that he was being honest in his assessment of their futures.

“Those are not comforting words, sir.”

“I did not intend them to be.” Ravus drained the last of the mug and held it out. “Get me another.”

Seymour refilled the mug and returned.

“Why have you not left and gone home?”

Ravus grimaced. “Why, so I can listen to the women and children in my building whimper and wail as the world comes to an end? At least here I can get some illusion of a peaceful death.”

“It’s a pity,” Seymour said. “To have escaped death’s grasp last year, only to fall into its clutches this year.”

The lanista shot him a look. He muttered into the lip of the mug. “Another year and this is all I have to show for it.”

“For what it’s worth, sir, you were a good lanista. Very good. I feel fortunate to have been trained under you.”

Ravus grunted softly. Seymour looked out into the dark. Now and then he could see ash and bits of stone as they fell within the gaze of the lamp, but he heard the stonefall more than he could see it. Out in the courtyard it was a hushed noise, as it was falling on an ever deepening blanket and made less noise. The stones and rocks still knocked and pinged loudly overhead on the roof. Now and then there was a particularly loud crack of stone on tile, and Seymour did his best not to visibly flinch at those noises.

“When I was out on the street earlier, I saw a woman die.”

Seymour blinked and shifted his attention back to the lanista. “A woman, sir?”

“The stones, falling from the sky.” He indicated the spot over his left eye. There was a woman out on the street, calling for her child. And a rock the size of a goose’s egg fell down and struck her on the temple. Broke her forehead right open, and she dropped dead on the spot.”

“That’s awful.” And it was, though Seymour would have thought that Ravus, being a former soldier who had seen a great deal of fighting and lost his own arm in battle, would have been more inured to such things.

“And then the woman’s child came to her calls, and found her like that on the ground.” Ravus closed his eyes. “There was nothing I could do.”

“It wasn’t your responsibility to protect that woman, sir,” Seymour said. “And, as you said, there was nothing you could do. It was a missile from the sky.”

“I know, Seymour. I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“Then, why feel guilty, sir?”

“I do not know. I just do.” Ravus held the mug out. “Go back inside, Seymour. You’re safer inside.”

Safer from what, Seymour wondered.


	16. Chapter 16

Kuja could see something when he stood in the triclinium and looked out toward the north through the door to the porch. A faint glow in the sky, distant. It was in the direction of the mountain. It made Kuja feel uneasy. What did the glow mean? Why was there light coming from Vesuvius, when everything else was so dark?

“I don’t feel safe here,” Kuja said the next time that Cid paced by the entrance to the dining hall. The foreman stopped and peered in on him.

“What, just now? It took you all this damn time to not feel safe? The damn roof’s creaking and you’re just now not feeling safe?”

“Oh, shut up, Cid.” Kuja sighed. He rubbed at his arms. “I wonder if it’s too late to get out of the city.”

“I would imagine the roads are mostly blocked up. You’d probably have to go on foot.”

The thought of having to trudge through all that ash and rock in his bare legs was enough to make his skin crawl. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the injury he already had sustained on his left leg. No, he would not likely make it out of Pompeii and to the next town on foot.

He might, though, be able to make it to the gladiator’s school. That was a much newer building than the Senator’s home, and would likely be more secure against the storm. And Seymour was there, so Kuja would not feel quite so alone during this time of crisis.

That was enough to settle the matter in Kuja’s mind. He turned his back on the porch and went back inside.

“I’m leaving,” Kuja said.

“What?” Cid made a snorting noise of disbelief. “You can’t just leave--you can’t just abandon the master’s property!”

“I can leave, and I’m not abandoning it.” Kuja made his way back to his room. “I am just going to Petronius Mateus’s gladiator school for the night. It should be safer there, and that is what Master Ardyn would want.”

The foreman cursed under his breath. “I’m not going out there with you. That’s as sure a death as drinking poison.”

“I’m not asking or telling you to, Cid.”

“Well… well, good.”

Kuja opened his clothes chest. He pulled on a few extra layers of tunic in hopes of shielding his skin from the storm. Then he had a thought: what if something happened and he could not return? He knew such sort of imaginings were only to bring bad luck upon him, but he could not shake the uneasy feeling that was now creeping in with them. So he retrieved a small old leather satchel from the bottom of his clothes chest. Into it went an insignificant looking little lockbox from the Senator’s desk--it was something Ardyn had told him would need to be retrieved in the event of a fire--and a few trinkets from his own belongings. Kuja was struck by the morbid thought that he had come to this home years ago with just one small bag, and now he might be leaving it forever with that same small bag.

He shook his head. Now was not the time to focus on such dismal thoughts. He had to maintain some sense of positivity. This was just an overnight trip, he told himself. He would go to the school, spend the night there, and likely get kicked out by Ravus in the morning. Everything would be fine.

It had to be.

 

At the gladiator school, Seymour sat on his bed in the barracks. He listened to the other men talk and whisper between themselves. There was some level of debate going on as to whether or not this was the end of the world.

“It’s too dark to tell now, we’ll have to wait until morning,” Rude was saying.

Reno was as agitated as ever. “But, what if morning never comes? What if the sun never rises again? What if it’s dark forever?”

“Then you will just have to learn to see in the dark,” Ansem said. The bestiarius got up and left the room. The men watched him leave before returning to their conversation.

“What if Vulcan’s mad at us?” Reno said. “What if we did something wrong yesterday?”

“What if I smother you with a pillow so we don’t have to listen to you anymore?”

“Shut up, Seifer.”

Seymour tuned out the men. He was tired of listening to their circular bickering, almost as tired as he was of listening to rocks hit the roof. He went outside. Here it was black as night, the darkness smothering out the sky and nearly managing to extinguish the light of the lamp that glowed near the door to the barracks. Ansem lurked in the shadows by the lamp, silent and staring out at the unnaturally dark evening. The only sounds out here came from the pattering of debris on the already encumbered ground.

“There will be no stars to guide our way tonight,” Ansem said after a long moment of quiet. 

“What do you mean? What way?”

“When we have to flee.”

“We aren’t going anywhere. Ravus said we were to stay put.”

Ansem’s golden eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “If you wish to be obedient and stay and die, then that is up to you. But I would rather escape and last to face my punishment, _alive_.”

Fair enough logic, Seymour supposed. He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Where is Ravus, anyway?”

“Gone to his office. I believe he wishes to spend his remaining time alone.”

“And why are you out here? Something might hit you.”

Ansem looked to the cracked open door to the barracks, and then back to Seymour. “Because, this building was constructed in haste for a rich man, and the production quality is poor. It is not a building that was meant to last a long time.”

“You don’t think it’s safe?”

“Of course not.” Ansem turned his face away now, shifting his gaze again to the darkness. “Surely you have heard the crashes of roofs nearby. The screaming of the people. Those trapped now in the darkness, waiting for help.”

“Well, yes…” Seymour didn’t want to admit that he had been trying not to hear it all.

“No help will ever come for them. It will be a very long time before anyone sees sign of them again.” Ansem closed his eyes. “All will be cast into darkness and forgotten.”

“That’s not a very--” Seymour stopped, mouth still open, as the ground growled beneath them.

The earthquake was brief and barely more than a shudder when compared to the one from earlier in the day, but it was still enough to spark fresh shrieks in the darkness.

And then from behind them came a long low groaning. The wall Seymour had been leaning on suddenly bucked beneath him and shoved him to the ground. The walkway roof crashed down onto him a moment later.

It took a minute of listening to his ears ring for Seymour to realize he was not dead. The support beams of the overhang had missed actually hitting him, but he was covered in a layer of splintered wood and a pile of ash and stone.

“Come on.” Ansem’s strong hand gripped under his armpit and tugged him to his feet. Seymour coughed and brushed the debris away. Ansem was holding the lamp now, its casing cracked but still providing a meager amount of light. It was in this light that Seymour could see the frown creasing the face of the bestarius. He turned to look at what Ansem was scowling at--

The barracks were gone. Or rather, the building was still there, but it now lay buried under its own collapsed walls and ceiling and everything the mountain had spit up on it that day.

“Shit. What are we going to do?”

He could hear a faint cry for help from within the mess, but could not discern who it was.

“We’ll get you, just hold on!”

Ansem’s free hand grabbed at his arm and tugged him back. “We can’t. We cannot help them now.”

“But they’re--”

Ansem’s voice was firm. “They are trapped, and so will we be if we stay and try to dig them out.”

Seymour swallowed. He looked back at the debris and shook his head. He did not want to leave the other men. He had spent months training with them, spilled blood with them--they were the closest thing he had to a family. He could not just leave them.

“We will send help back!” He called toward the remains of the barracks, even as Ansem pulled him away.

“We must go.”

“What about Ravus?”

“He has already chosen his tomb,” Ansem said. “Leave him be.”

Ansem’s grip was tight and nearly painful, and so Seymour had no choice but to follow him through the dark. All he could see now was the struggling glow of the lamp, and all he could do was follow that light.

Once they stepped out of the front door of the school Seymour had no idea where they were going. Ansem, however, did seem to have some clue. Seymour stopped, looking back in the direction of Vesuvius and it’s lingering, sinister glow, and then turned away in another direction. South, he believed, assuming the streets had themselves had not moved. After today he was nearly ready to believe that they could.

“This way,” Ansem said.

They started down the street, arms up at their foreheads to try and keep things out of their eyes. Their progress was slowed by the accumulated ash and rock and debris on the sidewalk and street. It was already as deep as a man’s hip, and each step forward was not simply taken, it had to be earned. Seymour wished now that he had a pillow or something with which to cover his head. He could not help but think of his conversation with Ravus, of the bruise on the lanista’s forehead and of the woman struck dead by a rock from above.

Walking with their backs to the mountain did have the benefit of not being able to see that source of terror. But, this could do nothing to prevent the panic that welled up in him whenever the ground briefly trembled and the fallen rock and pumice loudly clattered down from the roofs of the buildings they were creeping their way past.

Seymour stopped as another shudder from below caused the tephra to settle around him. There was a crash somewhere out in the dark, and he heard a woman wailing and a baby crying. His weary mind tried to dampen the sounds with another equally worrying thought: What had become of his lover? Where was Kuja? He had no way of knowing. Perhaps he should try to figure out where in the city they were, to see if he could find his own way to the home of the Senator. Uncertainty fixed him to the spot.

“What are you doing?” Ansem’s voice loomed close to his ear. “We must keep going.”

“There’s someone I forgot about.”

“If they had any sense in their head, they would have fled the city by now.” Ansem frowned and shook his head. “I will leave you behind if I have to.”

“No.” No, Seymour was worried about Kuja now, but he did not want to be left behind in this horrible creeping darkness. He did not want his tomb to be standing in the middle of the street in Pompeii. He had fought too hard for too long on the blood sands to surrender now.

“Are you with me, Seymour?”

He could only hope for now that Kuja had been smart enough to flee the city early on.

“I am. I am.”

 

It only took two blocks for Kuja to begin regretting his decision to leave the Senator’s home. Every step forward was a painful struggle, and he had to stop every few steps to regain his composure. He had never considered himself to be a truly delicate creature, but now he was having his doubts. He was no big strong gladiator, he was just a weak pretty little dancing eunuch. His eyes stung with tears.

“Calm down, calm down,” he muttered to himself through his shawl. He wiped at his stinging eyes. “It’s just the ash, calm down.”

Kuja continued on. He held the lamp he had brought with him from home up near his eye level, straining to make sense of his surroundings. He knew the streets of Pompeii well, had traversed them day and night for years, but in their current ash and rock covered condition they were all strange and foreign again to him.

He was near one of the bakeries, that much he could tell by a lingering smell. If it was the one he recalled, that meant he was getting closer to where the school was. Close now, he thought, almost there. Maybe if you’re lucky, Seymour will take pity on your leg and carry you. That would be nice.

He stopped again to catch his breath and check the wrappings on his leg. He tried to ignore the multitude of new scrapes and scuffs that came from walking in a tunic through all of the mountain’s debris.

More time passed, more steps, he lost track of how many and how long. Was it still daytime out there beyond the storm? Was it the middle of the night? He could not say. In that moment, he could not tell if he would ever see the sun again. It was a miserable thought.

He dusted off the front of the shawl covering his nose and mouth and carried on. “Even if I never see the sun shine again, at least let me see Seymour one more time. Give me that, gods, please.”

By the time the corner before the gladiatorial school came into view, Kuja was contemplating the merits of having his left leg just cut off and being carried around on a couch for the rest of his days. He’d already had worse things cut off, he was certain that he could handle losing a leg, too.

That was, of course, just the pain talking. Hopefully they had something at the school, something in their medical supplies that would help take the edge off.

What hope he had for finding relief, for finding help, for finding Seymour, for anything at all, all wavered and dashed as he finally rounded that last corner.

The front of the school, the area where he knew the dining hall and barracks were, had collapsed under the weight of the rock piled upon it. One of the walls had tipped forward into the street, unleashing a wave of broken stone that was almost impassable. Kuja stopped, staring at the mess in disbelief. The front doors were still partially in place--one was open, the other had been crushed off of its hinges.

Kuja made his way to the front door. He held the lamp up and peered down the dark hallway. He could not hear anyone inside, and could scarcely make out the end of the hall for the white and gray mess that had begun to work its way inside. Was anyone here? Had they left before the building collapsed? There was no note, no way to tell. And Kuja was reluctant to venture inside. He did not want to risk the building further giving way and crushing him.

He took a deep breath, pulled down the shawl, and yelled into the darkness.

“Hello? Hello, is anyone there? Are any of the gladiators still here?”

He covered his face again and strained to hear any response. First there was just the slight echo of his own voice, but then silence. No response, just the sound of rocks hitting the tephra behind him. If anyone was still here at the school, they either could not hear him, or could not respond.

“Hello? Is there anyone at all? Anyone?” He tried calling once more, but again the only reply he received was the sound of his own voice weakly returning to his ears.

Kuja sighed and turned back around. What was he to do now? He was too exhausted to even think of trying to make his way back home, or to try and navigate to some other place of safety. He set the lamp down on the surface of the ash and rock and considered his options.

And then the gods, out there in the darkness, chose his path for him.

A stony missile from above struck a glancing blow across his forehead, and Kuja collapsed in the doorway.

 

Seymour felt as though all of the skin on the front of his legs had been slowly flayed away by a thousand tiny knives. He did not complain about it, though, because Ansem was not complaining about it. Perhaps the bestiarius was simply made of stronger stuff than Seymour was, he did not know. But Ansem was quiet as they made their way through Pompeii. He said nothing as they passed other people, some still alive and struggling forward like them, some collapsed into the ash and stone and unable to go on. Seymour was unwilling to find out if those people were still alive or not. There was nothing he could do for any of them. There was barely anything he could do for himself.

Again he thought of Ravus, of the sour dispositioned lanista and his strange, unearned remorse for not being able to save a woman he did not even know. It was not like Ravus to be that emotional, to show any sign of caring for people, even himself. Perhaps it was just the stress of the situation. Seymour did not know, and did not believe he would ever find out now. They had left Ravus behind to die. Just like the other gladiators, even though neither he or Ansem had yet been willing to voice that fact out loud.

He kept his thoughts to himself.

After what to Seymour felt like days, but could not have been more than an hour or two, they reached the outside wall of the city, and one of the gates. A few miserable travellers were scattered around the archway, some trying to gather a bit of water from the drainage channel that had ceased to flow. Seymour studied a little sign posted near the big archway. It was the Stabian gate--the one that admitted travellers who had come from the nearby town of Stabiae. Seymour could remember the last time he had been through this gate. It had been more than a year now, since Seymour had pretended to escort Lucius Caelius Noctis out to the town and been rewarded with getting to see that strange beautiful man again. The man he fell in love with. The man whose fate Seymour did not know of. Was Kuja alive or dead? He might never know, now.

“This is where I leave you,” Ansem said. Seymour blinked and looked at the man.

“What? You can’t be serious. We shouldn’t split up.”

“It is my choice.” The bestiarius blinked his gold eyes and looked behind Seymour, back at the burning mountain. “I will be fine. If a lion could not kill me, I doubt that a mountain can, either.”

“Where will you go?” Hell, Seymour didn’t know where _he_ was going to go.

Ansem tipped his head to the side. “Home. Perhaps I will find the men who sold me into this business and reward them for their faithlessness.” He smirked.

Seymour did not even know where Ansem was originally from. The man had never been willing to speak of his past.

“If you say so.”

“I do.” Ansem held out the lamp. “Here, you take it. I am not afraid of the darkness.”

Seymour hesitated, but took the lamp. “Thank you. Be careful, Ansem. I hope you make it out of here alive.”

“The same to you, Seymour.” His dark fingers curled into a loose fist and thumped on his chest. “It has been an honor to serve with you.”

Seymour mimicked the gesture with his free hand. “And you, Ansem.”

Ansem turned away and looked up at the gate. “You are not a loser, Blue Death. Face this night as just another battle, and you will be fine.”

“Thank you, Ansem. Safe travels.”

The bestiarius nodded. He pushed forward through the gate, and then was gone past the glow of the lamp. Gone into the darkness.

Seymour rested for a few minutes before continuing on through the gate. The layer of debris was a bit thinner on this side of the city, further away from the mountain, and thusly a bit easier to make his way through. He almost immediately lost track of the road leading to Stabiae, but recalled that the water of the bay had been to his right while walking there. So he took a right, carefully picking his way down the uneven, unknowable hillside, doing his best not to twist his ankle or fall off a cliff in the dark.

He only knew he had reached the shore when the wet, pumice covered sand gave way under his sandals. He stopped and held up the lamp. The surface of the bay was covered in floating pumice. It bobbed up and down like a peculiar gray and white carpet, as far as the light would show him. No good for swimming, even if he were any good at it. No, there would have to be another way out.

Seymour looked back to the north, back toward Pompeii and the mountain. There was not much to see in the dark, just the mountain’s distant glow and the flicker here and there of fires on the city and countryside.

He turned his back on all of that and followed the coastline south. He stayed just off the shore, where the ground was firm enough to support his weight. The further he got from Pompeii, the thinner the layer of debris on the ground was. By the time he was walking on ground barely covered in a dusting of ash, Seymour had started to notice something off to the west--a gentle red glow. Was it fire? No, that direction was over the water. Seymour stopped and stared at the red light. 

It was the sunset.

Seymour sank to his knees. He set the lamp down on the ground next to him, unable to take his eyes off the soft light. He stared, his mind taking a long time to register the truth. The world had not ended. He was still alive. Ansem had been right--he had battled the mountain and won.

But then, why did his eyes sting? Why did he feel so close to tears?

Why did he feel as though he had lost?


	17. Chapter 17

It took the whole night, wearily making his way along by the starlight once the lamp had run out of fuel, to round the bottom side of the bay and reach the town of Surrentum. He stopped a few times during the night, to rest and look back to the north. There were no stars to the north, just darkness and the occasional rolling flicker of light tracing a path through the countryside. He was hungry and thirsty and so tired that it made his bones ache, but he could not sleep.

Seymour was not the first refugee from Pompeii to arrive in Surrentum. By the time he stumbled into town, just after dawn, there were already crowds of people gathered. A few gave him skeptical looks, but most ignored him. Seymour could only imagine how frightful he looked, but most of the people here in town were not in much better condition.

Too tired to care now, Seymour found an unoccupied spot in the shade near a bakery and sat down. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. As before, he could not rest. His mind was too rattled to let his body find peace.

“Seymour?”

He opened his eyes at the sound of the familiar voice. There stood Marcus Petronius Mateus, shielding his eyes from the early morning sunlight. The man, despite wearing a tattered and dusty tunic and having a smear of blood down the right side of his face, looked as calm and put together as ever. The only hint that something was amiss was the layer of surprise baked into the tone of his voice.

That was right. He was still a slave, wasn’t he. Escaping the mountain’s wrath had not changed that.

Seymour got to his feet as quickly as his sore muscles would allow. “Master Petronius, I am glad to see you are alive.”

“As am I.” Mateus lowered his hand and squinted at him. “Are you alone, Seymour?”

He hesitated. “I am afraid so, sir.”

Petronius Mateus’s expression did not change, though his gaze shifted away from Seymour. “I see. What a waste.”

“Of your money, or the men’s lives, sir?”

“Both, if I am to be honest. You were all good men, excellent fighters. But, I cannot pretend as though you and the school were not also a large financial investment.” He let out a soft sigh. “That is all lost now, I suppose.”

“You did not come to check on us when the mountain caught fire,” Seymour said.

“No. I was busy trying to secure things elsewhere. I am one of the magistrates, after all.” He paused, and something that Seymour did not understand flickered across his expression. “I was, at least. All for naught, now. The lookout says great clouds were sweeping down Vesuvius to Pompeii with the dawn. I fear nothing may be left to go back to.”

“It was already pretty bad last night, when I escaped with Ansem.”

“Ansem?” Mateus looked around. “I did not see him here.”

“I do not know where he is now. We parted ways when we reached the Stabian road. That was his decision, not mine.”

“I suppose I cannot blame him.” Mateus scratched at his chin. “Tenebrarum Ravus came to me yesterday. He looked rather shaken up about something. Wanted to know what he should do, what should be done at the school. I told him to go back and keep everyone situated indoors until the storm passed.”

“The roof of the barracks collapsed and trapped most of the men inside,” Seymour said. “There was nothing we could do to get to them. Ansem insisted on fleeing the city.”

“A decision that likely saved your life. What about Ravus?”

“I do not know. He was in his office at the school last we saw him. I would expect he followed your word and kept to his post, until the end.”

Mateus sighed again. “I cannot help but wonder what we did to incur such violence upon our city.”

Seymour did not have an answer to that, so he said nothing in reply. Instead, he waited a moment, then asked: “What will you do now?”

“Go back to Rome. Take care of my family. See what my father wants me to do.” Mateus turned away. “You will go back with me, though I don’t know if I have much use for a solitary gladiator, even if he is a champion.”

You could let me go, Seymour thought. You’re letting Ansem go, why not me?

“Yes, sir, I understand. Is there anything I can do for you now, sir?”

“Just come with me. There is a place I am staying for the time being. We will get you something to eat and drink, and a place to rest. We probably won’t have access to a boat for a few days.”

“Yes, sir.”

Following his owner through the busy town streets, Seymour realized that Mateus had not come upon him sitting there completely on accident. He was not wandering around, lost. He was looking for any sign of the gladiators, or of anyone else that he might know.

“Master?”

“Hm?” Mateus cast a look back at him.

“Have you any word of Lucius Caelius Kuja? Did he escape the city?”

“Kuja?” Mateus frowned. “No. I’m afraid there’s been no word of him. Why do you ask?”

“I considered him a friend, that’s all.”

Mateus turned away and continued walking. “I understand.”

 

Seymour was given bread and wine, and eventually permitted to use the public baths to clean up. The town medic inspected his various cuts and scrapes and bruises and said that nothing was life threatening as long as it was kept clean. He spent the rest of the time wrapped in a tattered blanket and lying on the floor in a guest room. He had trouble sleeping. His dreams were full of thunder and danger, and when he woke he was struck again by the still raw sadness that came with the realization that everyone who had mattered to him yesterday morning was gone.

The next morning, the sky to the north had mostly cleared, though there was honestly not much to see. The last of the stragglers from Pompeii and Stabiae had arrived the afternoon before, telling of the peril and of a massive cloud of fire and ash that had swallowed everything up. A bit of smoke still trailed out of the broken peak of the mountain, and the landscape that surrounded it was awash in shades of gray and white.

It was through this washed out scenery that a figure appeared mid-morning. Seymour was lounging near the bakery when he heard the women watching the shore chattering about another person coming down the ash-stained beach. Curious, Seymour got up and went to see what they were talking about. He wondered if it were perhaps Ansem, having changed his mind about running off like a little wildcat.

The women pointed to the figure. It was not, Seymour immediately realized, the bestiarius returned from the wilds. This figure was too pale, too narrow in the frame. It was a tall man, his posture listed to the left under the weight of a bundle he had thrown over his right shoulder. As he came closer, Seymour realized the list was due to the man lacking his left arm. It was the lanista, returned from the dead. And the bundle cast over his shoulder had feet. A body.

“I come seeking aid!” Ravus called as he came within shouting distance of the wall. His voice was thick and rough, as though he had swallowed a great deal of the mountain. “I seek Marcus Petronius Mateus, if that man is here!”

The women chattered between each other, and one ran off to the house where the former magistrate was staying. She returned a few minutes later, Mateus in tow.

“What’s this, Seymour? Someone calling for me?”

“Another of your men have returned from the dead, sir,” Seymour said.

They waited for Ravus to be admitted into the town and led to where Mateus was standing. He asked for help in setting the bundle down, and gingerly laid it out on the ground. The body’s head tilted to the side as it touched the tiles, and Seymour could barely contain a gasp. Despite being coated in ashes and blood, he recognized the face.

It was Kuja.

“I apologize for my late arrival, Lord Mateus. But, I was encumbered.”

“Is he dead?” Mateus asked, gesturing at the ground.

“No. He stirs sometimes, but does not answer me.”

Kuja was nearly motionless, his delicate figure wrapped in what looked to Seymour like an old bed cover.

Mateus waved down two of the town guards. “Get him to the medic. See what can be done.”

Seymour watched the men carry Kuja away, desperately wanting to follow. He did not want to let Kuja out of his sight. But instead he remained at his master’s side.

“We thought you had resolved yourself to die,” Seymour said to the lanista. Ravus was gulping from a pitcher of water.

“I had,” he said once he had caught his breath. “But then I heard this call coming down the hallway. And it was that--” Ravus laughed and shook his head. “It was that damned dancer of yours, Mateus. I went out to tell him to go away and let us die in peace, but by the time I got out there he was sprawled on the pumice with a gash on his forehead.”

Mateus’s tone was doubtful. “And you took it upon yourself to save him?”

Ravus looked, grim, in the direction that Kuja had been taken. “He did the same for me, when he did not want to.”

“There is a level of difference between singing for a man and carrying one out of a burning city.” Mateus gestured at the lanista’s left shoulder. “In your condition, and in the dark, with no lantern.”

The lanista’s lips were pursed. “I am well aware of the fact, sir. But, the gods listened to him. I could not take the chance that leaving him there to die would not anger the wrong god.”

“Fair enough.”

“So, it’s Kuja’s fault that you decided to live?” Seymour asked. Ravus looked at him.

“You could say that, yes. That man is a strange creature, and I can only believe that him falling at our doorstep was mandated by some god or the Fates. Though, hopefully not the same one that buried the damn city.”

Petronius Mateus patted him on the shoulder. “Whatever it took, I am glad that you are here, Ravus.”

“Indeed.” The lanista paused for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. “Though, I have had some time to dwell on what I will do with this new chance at life. And so, my lord, I would like to respectfully offer my resignation of services as your lanista.”

Mateus sighed. “Regrettable, but understandable.”

“You were going to have to terminate my contract soon anyways,” Ravus said. “Seeing as you lack a facility and students for me.”

“You don’t have to rub the issue in,” Mateus said. “It’s still something of a sore spot.”

“My apologies.”

“What will you do now, then, Lord Ravus?” Seymour asked. “You were a good lanista, I’m sure you could get work elsewhere.”

“Perhaps,” Ravus said. “But, I think perhaps I will take what I have and retire.”

“And what do you have, sir?”

The lanista looked down. He raised his right hand and flexed his fingers. He looked back up, and Seymour was surprised by the slight smile on his face.

“My health.”


	18. Chapter 18

Regrettably, Seymour did not get a chance to speak with Kuja again before he left Surrentum with his master. They took a boat to Ostia, and then rode to Rome itself. Petronius Mateus returned to the home of his father, where his wife and child were waiting for him. Seymour found himself relegated to sleeping the slaves’ quarters, something he found offensive even though he knew that was all he really was.

He spent his days doing nothing, just trying not to think of those he had lost and waiting for the word that he had been sold to a new school.

When nearly a week of days had passed this way, Seymour was called to Mateus’s office. The man’s newly hired personal bodyguard was standing outside the door, but Ravus just shrugged his good shoulder and gestured at the open doorway. Seymour could tell from the subtly uncomfortable look on Mateus’s face, from the way he would not quite meet Seymour’s eyes, that the day had come. Mateus did not say much, just that he would be delivering Seymour to his new owner in person, as was part of the sales agreement.

They did not go far, in fact they did not leave the wealthier, more well appointed part of the city. Their destination was a large old estate, even grander than the one the Petronius family called home. Curious, Seymour looked for the family name by the door, but could not find a sign.

They were let into the home by the doorman, and led to a parlor to wait to be greeted by Seymour’s new owner. He was not nervous, no, he had changed hands several times before, going from one wealthy man to another like a well bred horse. He simply wondered who Mateus had sold him off to.

The answer came led in by a boisterous voice that was too big and too loud for the old house.

“Marcus Petronius! So good to see you! I hope you are settling in well here in Rome. How is your wife and child, are they well?” Lucius Caelius Ardyn was in his senator’s tunic. He held out his hand, and after a moment of hesitation, Mateus clasped arms with him.

“All is well, Senator. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today.”

“Of course, of course.” Ardyn scratched the stubble on his chin and looked at Seymour. “And there is our sole survivor. No worse for wear, I take it?”

“I am doing quite well, Senator Ardyn. Thank you for your concern.”

Ardyn smiled toothily at the gladiator before turning his attention back to Mateus. “Are you sure about this?”

“I am. It is a pity to lose another good man, but I believe it will all work out in the end.”

Seymour was puzzled. He recalled Kuja having told him, months before, that the Senator was fond of seeing gladiatorial combat but had never expressed any interest in actually owning any gladiators. So, why now?

“Respectfully, sir, I must admit surprise that you were interested in buying a gladiator.”

The Senator wagged a finger at him. “Oh, no, you aren’t for me. You’re a gift for someone who will make much better use of you.” He turned and shouted to the doorway. “My dear statue, you can come in now!”

A figure appeared in the doorway. Seymour’s heart leapt into his throat.

“Kuja?”

The younger man smiled shyly. He was clad in a fine, pale blue silk tunic, and was, as his custom, not wearing any shoes. Seymour noticed the bruises dotting his arms and legs and the bandage wrapped around his left knee. Kuja padded over to the Senator, who leaned and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“Honestly, Kuja, I knew you wanted to see more of me, but I did not expect you to go to such extreme lengths in order to be returned to Rome.”

“Oh, you know me, my lord. Never one to undersell something.”

Seymour noticed, as Ardyn moved away, that there was a scar on Kuja’s forehead, peaking out a finger’s length from his hairline. Despite the ugly red mark, Seymour still thought Kuja looked beautiful, and he thought the man looked well recovered from his trauma in Pompeii.

Physically, at least. Seymour was still finding himself a bit jumpy at loud noises after what had happened in Pompeii, and he wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he was not alone in that feeling.

Kuja smiled prettily at Seymour. “It is good to see you again, Seymour. I’m glad you made it out of Pompeii alive.”

“And, I of you, Kuja.”

Mateus made a thoughtful noise. “Am I to understand, Senator, that you’ve purchased my last gladiator not for yourself, but for Kuja?”

“Indeed, my good man. After the events of the last few days, I’ve come to the conclusion that my dear Kuja needs someone to keep him protected and safe. Who better for that task than a mighty gladiator?” The Senator made a grandiose gesture at Seymour. “A good idea, don’t you think?”

There was something almost sad in the former magistrate’s voice. “Indeed, a very good idea.”

“Excellent. You’ll find that the agreed upon sum has been transferred from my family’s bank to yours.” Ardyn gestured at the door. “Now then, I’ve some refreshments prepared if you are interested.”

“Of course.”

 

Kuja watched Ardyn and Mateus leave the parlor. Then he turned his attention back to the other occupant of the room.

“Oh, Seymour!” He ignored the lingering pain in his left leg and ran to him, throwing his arms around him and pressing his face into Seymour’s tunic. He was relieved to feel the strong arms wrap around him and hold him close.

“I’m glad you are doing better,” Seymour said. “I was afraid--in Pompeii--”

“Shh, that is over, now. We’re here now, okay? Together. Master Ardyn did this just so we could be together.”

“Did you ask him to?”

He looked up at Seymour. “No. He offered to when he heard about what had happened to Petronius Mateus’s school. He said he… he wanted me to be happy.” Kuja smiled. “And I am.”

“So am I, though I certainly wasn’t expecting this.”

“I was wondering… Do you want me to free you?” he asked. To his surprise, Seymour shook his head.

“No, I don’t. I don’t want any excuse, any possible reason for us to ever be apart again. If I am yours, then I will stay yours until the end.”

“Really?” It sounded too good to be true.

“Yes, really.” Seymour leaned down and kissed him. “I mean it. Yours, forever, if you’ll be mine forever.”

“I will.” Kuja raised up on his toes and kissed him again. “I promise.”

“Good.”

Kuja licked his lips. “Well, then, why don’t I show you around the place? The way to my chambers, at least.”

Seymour smiled. “Lead the way.”

 

~The End~


End file.
